


Vorsprung durch Technik

by HoneySempai



Series: A Cord of Three Strands [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Night Nurse (Marvel Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: 20th Century World History, Alternate Universe - Supersoldier Peggy Carter, Avengers ReWrite, CATFA rewrite, Christian Peggy Carter, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Haitian Gabe Jones, Intersex Peggy Carter, Intersex Steve Rogers, Jewish Steve Rogers, Multi, Native American Steve Rogers, New York City, Other, Power Couple Steggy, Public Image, Science and Magic, Urban Legends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-11-17
Packaged: 2018-12-09 07:44:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11664684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoneySempai/pseuds/HoneySempai
Summary: March, 1945Steve and Peggy go under. The world is at war, and they know what they've lost.July, 2011Steve and Peggy wake up. The world is still at war, and it's not always easy to see what they've won.





	1. Prologue I: Flowers in the Mud

**Author's Note:**

> **Me to Me:** Hey Caitlyn, maybe you should pick just one of your, like, five WIPs and give it your full atten--
> 
>  **Also Me to Me, blasting the Zooropa album and eating brownies straight out of the pan:** _N O P E_
> 
> This story is influenced by the titular "[Zooropa](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=elmr453siOw)" which is about two creatures who emerge from the dark into "the overground", a world of light, possibilities, and uncertainty. What makes this song so cool is that it's primarily comprised of advertising slogans, or riffs thereupon...at the same time that the new world is dazzling and exciting, it's also confusing, decontextualized, and insidiously artificial. 
> 
> For those who don't speak German, the title means "Advancement through Technology".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TW: Canon character death; discussion of infant death, alcoholism, and domestic violence**

She hasn't seen Steve yet.

Truthfully, she hasn't really seen anyone today. Not since Morita's voice came over the radio. "We got Zola. Barnes...we lost Barnes, he fell, he's gone. Barnes is dead. Fuck, he's dead."

Sure, she'd heard Phillips swear under his breath to her right, and Howard whisper "Oh, no...oh Pegs, I'm sorry..." as he touched her arm from behind. Sure, she's noticed vague outlines walking around her since then, and spoken to dully-colored silhouettes, given orders and reports and, at one point, taken dictation.

But if she were asked what she said or heard or if, indeed, any of those people had been real, she wouldn't be able to answer with any certainty.

But Steve is real. Steve, sitting heedless of broken wood and glass on the floor of a bombed-out former bar in his dark green uniform, his skin sheet-white everywhere it isn't grief-pink, a bright sheen painted over his blue eyes, whiskey threatening to splash over the side of the cup he clutches in trembling hand, is definitely real.

For the first time in two years she wishes he weren't.

"My dad," Steve says abruptly, after she's taken a silent seat on the ground next to him, her whole frame held tightly together lest it shake apart, "drank a lot."

"You've told me," ghosts out of Peggy's mouth, almost inaudible.

"He drank a lot more after my sister died," Steve elaborates, almost robotically. "He would...he'd come home with it. Every day. Bottles and bottles of wine. Sometimes the hard stuff, when he could get it. Way more than seven people could drink in a _week_ , but somehow it'd all be gone by the next night. And then when he...when he couldn't walk anymore, when he couldn't...he'd yell for it. Constantly. Scream. He started out with orders. Then with threats. And by the end...by the end he was begging for it. My grandmother would, she'd take me outside so I wouldn't hear it, but he was so loud. Just... _Sarah, Sarah, for the love of God. Ney, please. Steve, bring it to me, I need it, please, son..._ Day and night. You couldn't...couldn't get away from it."

Peggy makes a soft noise. The corner of Steve's mouth gives an involuntary little twitch.

"But we didn't...we never gave in to him. Couldn't afford it, and...and I, even if I could've, I wanted to punish him, a little. He'd be begging me to take pity on him, and all I'd think of was how he hit my mother so hard he gave her a nosebleed. More than once. I didn't...I thought he didn't deserve it, the booze. Didn't deserve to feel better, after what he put her through."

Peggy nods.

"I can't get drunk now," Steve says, staring down at his glass like it's betrayed him, and then at Peggy like he's betrayed her. "You think that's my punishment?"

"It wasn't your fault, Steve." He shakes his head. "Steve, it _wasn't_ \--"

"He--" Steve says, before he chokes on his breath; the grass cracks in his hand and he only dimly feels the alcohol being to drip down his fingers. "He, Bucky, he picked up the shield. Got his attention. To protect me. If he hadn't...if I hadn't dropped it, if I'd..."

"That's war, Steve," Peggy says, her fingers trembling as they close over his, growing as wet from the whiskey as her cheeks are from tears. _"That's war, Margaret,"_ her father had said, when the telegram announcing Michael's death and unrecovered body came. "You couldn't have...you didn't _do this_ to him."

"All this," Steve presses, gesturing clumsily with his free hand to his enhanced body, "all this for nothing. For fucking _nothing_ , Peggy," he croaks, and the glass finally drops, and Peggy clings to his hand like they're both drowning. "I could've protected him, I finally could've, and I didn't."

"Steve, please...oh God, Steve, please don't, don't do this to yourself..."

"I should've let him go home. I should've _made_ him go home, I should've stapled the fucking discharge to his hand."

"He chose to stay. He wanted to stay."

"Because I _asked him_. He did all this because of _me_ , because I couldn't...I tried, Peggy. I've always tried, and I've always made it fucking _worse_."

"Don't you dare," Peggy tries to snap, tries to threaten, but her voice is shaking and tears are running into her mouth, and she holds his hand too tightly. "Don't you, please don't. He loved you, Steve. He wanted, he wanted to stay with you."

"Peggy, I ruined his life. From the start, I...I ruined it, and then I got him killed."

" _Stop_ ," Peggy orders, or pleads; her free hand claws at his face, leaving faint red marks until they get purchase and can finally turn his head so he looks at her. "Steve, _no_. Don't you think...do you think he was stupid? Do you?"

His head shakes, almost imperceptibly; she only just feels it move in her hand.

"Then don't you think he thought about what could happen? Don't you think he, don't you think he knew and decided that it was worth dying..." Her hand falls away from his face, to grab his shoulder; she can barely breathe, or hold her head up. "God, Steve. Give him that. Let him have some bloody _dignity_ at least. _Please._ "

He's fighting her; she can tell by the way his shoulder tenses under his hand, and she moves before he can.

"I can't get drunk anymore, either. Am I being punished?"

He jerks, his hands flying to her face and the back of her neck, and he tugs her forward, into him. She's uncharacteristically limp against him, but heavy all the same, and her fingers squeeze impotently wherever they've managed to land on his body.

"I'm sorry, Peggy," he tells her, for undermining her grief; "I'm so sorry," he says, for bringing Bucky to her, and taking him away.

" _They_ killed him," Peggy sobs, because she knows what he's thinking. "Hydra killed him. Not you. This isn't your fault. It's theirs. They did this. I blame _them_."

Peggy will write to Rosemarie, but Steve will have to let the family know, Aunt Win and Uncle George, and Rebecca at her new husband's house. He can't let anyone else do it. He'll have to telegram their family, _Bucky's_ family--they're not his anymore; the Barnes have never once let him down and he won't go back to them with Bucky's blood on his hands--and regret to inform them that Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes was killed in service to his country; he'll have to write the letter, the real one after the official one, telling them that Hydra hadn't been content to merely make Bucky suffer. They'd had to destroy him completely, too.

"I'm going to kill Schmidt," Steve says. "I'm not going to stop until every single Hydra agent is dead."

There's enough steel in his voice to prop Peggy up, to give her something to hold onto and keep her steady. The half-broken window is too far away for her to see her expression, but she's sure their faces match by now; ruddy and wet and hard as stone, united in anguish, in rage.

"You won't be alone."


	2. Prologue II: It's Cold Outside, But Brightly Lit

"Wait!"

Peggy's hand latches onto one of the straps to the shield's holster. Phillips is driving alongside the Valkyrie, just barely keeping pace with the plane; Steve can hardly even hear him yelling at Peggy about what in hell she thinks she's doing over the roar of wind as Schmidt barrels toward the exit to the hangar. He's clinging to the leg attaching the wheel well to the plane, angled so that his feet are still anchored against the doors of the pilfered car, and Peggy's fingers dig into his uniform as she starts to crawl up his back.

"Peggy, what--"

Schmidt accelerates, yanking Steve's feet off of the car, and whatever part of Peggy isn't already attached throws itself upward; as his legs hook around the metal she grips his shoulders, pressed as close to the shield on his back as she can, and swings her feet until they land solidly on top of the wheel well.

Steve knows she can't hear him over the wind, but he hopes she can feel the vibrations of him yelling at her.

She can, but she ignores them as she ducks under the shield and inches herself around so she comes up beside him, one arm wrapped around the small of his back, the other pulling the shield out of its holster. She goes up on tiptoe once the shield is in hand, jerking it up towards an exit hatch on the bottom of the plane; Steve sees her plan, shoves down his anger, and wraps an arm around her waist to hoist her up, so she can smash the edge of the shield into the hatch and break it open.

They duck their heads as the weakest but only real defense against the chunks of metal that fall underneath the attack, and as soon as there's a hole big enough to fit Peggy through she digs her heels into Steve's side, scaling him even as he pushes her up into the belly of the plane. As soon as she's safely on her knees on the floor of the plane, the shield laying beside her, she grabs the metal and bends it back, making room for Steve to climb up.

Both of them jerk back down as shots fire in their direction, the noise of their break-in having attracted Schmidt's footsoldiers; Peggy picks up the shield to guard herself, and when there's a lull in the firing she throws it, bringing down the man closest to her. Steve leaps inside the plane as the shield ricochets back towards her, tackling Peggy and using the momentum to roll them both away from the hail of bullets raining down on them. Steve stops them under a catwalk, releases her and then immediately dives towards the shield, grabbing it before he can get hit, and Peggy digs her own gun out of her belt as she gets to her feet, staying underneath the shelter of the walkway as she moves closer to their attackers.

Steve runs behind the missiles stored inside the plane, and the Hydra soldiers cut their firing short, to keep from striking a missile and risk setting it off, and Peggy uses the pause to shoot up into the catwalk. A bullet or two makes it past the pattern of the floor, but it's mainly a distraction, and it works; as Peggy runs away with their focus Steve holsters the shield, clambers atop one of the missiles, and jumps onto the catwalk, grabbing one man by the head and twisting until his neck snaps, and smashing in the face of the companion who comes to avenge him. The third one advances on Steve, a gun and knife both drawn, and goes down before he can land a blow with either when Peggy darts out from under the catwalk and shoots him through the jaw.

There's a control panel ten feet away from Steve and he rushes toward it, under the cover of Peggy firing at two more men who appear from deeper within the plane. Gabe's taught him just enough German to know what will open a hatch, and Steve yanks on that lever now, sending one of the missiles plummeting harmlessly into the Atlantic Ocean. Peggy screams his name between gunshots and he ducks to avoid the man who had managed to evade Peggy's bullets; he comes up immediately, headbutting the man, grabbing him while he's disoriented, and throwing him over the side of the catwalk, into the gaping hole the missile had just fallen through.

Peggy's near him now, jumping up so she can catch the side of the catwalk one-handed; he drops down so he can grab her by the hand and opposing shoulder, and drag her onto the walkway. She shoots past him once she's on her feet, felling another Hydra agent as he approaches.

"What part of "you won't be alone" escaped you?" she asks, smiling wryly into Steve's livid face.

"Stay here," Steve barks, as she lowers her gun. "Drop the rest of these missiles while we got the chance. I'll go ahead, I'll take out anyone coming for you, and then I'll get Schmidt."

Peggy jerks her head in a short, sharp nod, recognizing the expediency of the plan as well as the relative safety it puts her in simultaneously, and choosing not to argue it. Steve pulls the shield off his back, to hold in front of his chest, and runs off in the direction the Hydra agents have been coming from; as Peggy dashes to another control panel several feet away she can hear the faint _clang_ of Steve assaulting a Hydra agent, and the resultant scream of pain, and the schadenfreude she's felt since killing the first foot soldier continues to grow thick and lush around her heart. 

Ten more missiles fall into the ocean, one after another as fast as Peggy can drop them, and then she takes off after Steve, following the trail of downed Hydra agents, and dropping the ones who had managed to survive Steve's initial onslaught with the same amount of vengeful glee.

*

The cockpit to the Valkyrie is as Steve expects it to be: unnecessarily, ostentatiously large, more like a throne room than anything practical. Fitting for a madman who thought himself a god. Steve feels his blood beginning to boil, his chest beginning to heave, at the thought of even self-bestowed honor being afforded to the man responsible for Bucky's torture and death, and it takes every last ounce of self-control to not kick the door in right then and there, to open it slowly. The plane is picking up speed, he can feel it, and he can't afford to give himself away; the bright blue cube--the Tessarect, Zola had told Phillips it was called--sits in the middle of the room on a platform behind the captain's chair, and God knows what weapons it's controlling.

He gets down the small flight of stairs and a handful of steps into the room proper when the sound of a laser gun warming up just barely warns him of Schmidt hidden among the support beams to his left; he turns and catches the shot with his shield just in time to go flying backwards into the wall instead of being vaporized on the spot.

Steve turtles under the shield, trying to get his feet under him without leaving them vulnerable to Schmidt's weapon, and once he does he launches himself forward, plowing into Schmidt and forcing him to drop the weapon. He lifts the shield out of the way, ramming a fist into Schmidt's gut before bringing the shield's edge down into the curve of his shoulder into his neck. Schmidt drops to his knees with a shout of pain that covers for him tackling Steve's legs, making him fall to the floor and drop the shield. He stands up, giving a solid kick to Steve's rib cage, but before he can land another one Steve grabs his leg and yanks, dragging him to the floor. He appreciates the loud _thunk_ of Schmidt's head hitting the metal; he appreciates his arm wrapping around Schmidt's neck even more. 

The door bangs open again, and from the corner of Steve's eye he can see Peggy in the doorway, her gun already trained on Schmidt.

"Peggy, the plane! Turn it north!"

Peggy rushes forward, keeping her gun up until she's in the pilot's seat, and Steve is just distracted enough for Schmidt to send a sharp elbow into his gut, loosening the hold enough to turn and stagger to his feet, dragging Steve up with him. The plane lurches as Peggy jerks it off course, throwing all three of them to the floor; Schmidt breaks free of Steve and throws himself forward, to grab his dropped weapon.

The shield lays a few feet to Steve's right and he rolls to get to it in time, leaping to his feet so he can catch the stream of blue energy with his shield, but the force of it knocks his feet out from under him, sending him face first into the floor. Behind him Peggy reaches up to flick on the autopilot and then scrambles away from the cockpit behind a support beam, trying to angle herself far enough left and come up close enough to get a clear shot of Schmidt; her movement catches his attention, and despite herself a jolt of cold fear floods her body when Schmidt aims his weapon in her direction.

Steve moves before he can think, not even fully up on his knees again when he throws the shield; the spinning edge catches Schmidt in his ribcage, throwing him backwards, jerking his weapon back to center and out of his hands. Steve covers his head, and Peggy throws herself to the floor, as the blue light shoots forward, striking the platform holding the Tessarect and toppling it backwards so it smashes into the pilot's seat, and the seat into the yoke, tilting the nose of the Valkyrie downwards. 

They don't notice, can't notice, because there's an awful noise then, like a monster screaming, and Peggy clumsily crawls forward as a cloud of blue lightning plumes around the Tessarect. 

"No..." Schmidt gasps, pushing the shield away from him, trying to sit up from where it had sent him crashing to the floor, two ribs puncturing a lung on the way down. "What in hell...?"

Steve turns himself over on the floor, and then staggers backwards onto his feet as the cloud opens up to the ceiling in a stream of irisdescent blue and pink light. He's been to the Hayden Planetarium, seen what the world's leading astrophysicists know about the universe beyond Earth, but he's completely unprepared for the sight of the Valkyrie's ceiling replaced by a purple-black sky, awash in stars and nebulas and distant galaxies receding into an unending, silent distance. 

Peggy trips her way onto her feet; she can see Steve's face, filled equally with horror and awe, and forces herself to not look at what he's seeing. She stumbles into him, making him trip back, and as he rights his body his mind comes back along with it. 

Schmidt's weapon lays impotently on the floor a few feet ahead of him, and even though he weakly scrambles for it Steve and Peggy get there first. 

It occurs to Steve, as Peggy's finger slides around the trigger underneath his and they pull it at the same time, that he's too dumbstruck to relish this kill as it happens. But for all his unblinkingly vicious protectiveness, Bucky really wasn't a violent-hearted person; if Steve can't get any joy out of the act of avenging him, Bucky probably won't hold it against him. 

There's another screeching noise from the Tessarect, and Peggy's shaking hand falls away from the gun as she lets herself look back towards the front of the plane. She sees a piece of the universe spread out before her for just an instant, long enough for it to sear itself into her memory, before the light shooting up from the cube stutters and collapses in on itself, taking the view of infinity with it.

The Tessarect is gone by the time they make it to the cockpit; burnt through the part of the control panel that wasn't already smashed by the platform and the chair.

"Oh, shit," Steve whispers. "Oh, _shit_..."

He grabs Peggy and hauls her back, but they don't make it past the stairs out of the cockpit before the plane runs aground.

*

There's no telling where they are, aside from in ice; the way to tell their coordinates is destroyed, as is the radio to call for anyone. The plane keeps sinking, a little more every few minutes, but enough of the windshield is still above ground for them to see sunlight; this far north, though, it's hard to use the sun to tell time.

Peggy's hand spasms, her fingers digging into the meat of Steve's shoulder. It's so cold, worse than the months they'd spent in Russia before coming back to the Alpine countries, and there's no relief aside from each other and the emergency supply blankets they had scoured the entire Valkyrie to locate. That was how they'd found the small escape planes that they might have taken, had they not been stored beneath the cockpit and crushed into scrap metal when the Valkyrie smashed into the ice.

"I think it'll be all right," Peggy says abruptly. They've been quiet ever since they found their last chance at escape destroyed, and Steve blinks down at her, surprised to hear her talk. "It looked like...like we routed them pretty thoroughly, before you and I got on the plane."

"Whatever's left'll probably fall apart without Schmidt," Steve replies quietly, clutching her a little tighter as she shivers. They're cocooned in every blanket they found, but the coldness of the metal they're laying on is seeping through the layers of cotton like it wants to take mercy on them as soon as possible. "Not like there's anyone set to take his place."

"Timing worked out, didn't it?" Peggy whispers into his collarbone, voice higher than she wants. "We're only a day off." This is all right. It's nice, even. They'll get to see Bucky now, and she'll introduce them to Michael, too. Her parents, and Rosemarie, and the Barnes, they'll...they'll be fine, they'll get past this. "Though I expect he'll be quite cross with us for this."

"Hey, he's the one who said "end of the line" first," Steve somehow manages to laugh, and Peggy giggles until her breathing hitches and she chokes on a whimper. Steve's hand finds hers under the blankets, and then comes up, to wipe away the tears before they can freeze on her face.

He wants to apologize, for not finding a way to protect the control panel, for not stopping the plane before it could leave the hangar, for coming into her life in the first place. But he knows what she'll say, and that she hates repeating herself, so he presses all of his regret into the kiss he leaves on her lips instead.

"I love you, Steve," she says, hoping he knows she's speaking for two. 

"Love you, too," he breathes back, hoping she knows he's speaking to both.

Peggy shifts, somehow finding a way to press up against him even closer than she already is. The adrenaline of battle is finally fully draining away, leaving only the sting of cold and a heavy tiredness behind it. An almost sleepy little noise escapes her as her eyes blink shut--she hit her head when the plane crashed, and she's wanted to rest ever since--and Steve shudders with his whole body, the way he did when scarlatina or rheumatic fever threatened to steal his breath away.

He'd memorized it back then, the whole thing. His mother had thought his fascination with it a little unnervingly morbid, but Steve had liked the poetry of it, and the sentiment.

"M-...Modeh ani...ani l'fanecha Adonai elohe, ve-lohe avosai, sh-...she-r'fu-asi b'yadecha umisasi b'yadecha."

Peggy doesn't know of anything particular to say at the time of dying. Even in the midst of war, she's never actually been at a deathbed, let alone on one, if this counts as a bed. What she can think of seems so childish compared to what Steve has, something that, even with her limited understanding, feels so visceral and bone-deep, as opposed to _As I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep._

"Y'hi ratzon mil', mil'fanecha, she-tirpah-eni r'fu-ah sh'lemah, v'im amus, t'he misasi cha-parah al," he swallows, and buries his fingers in her hair; her head is the last bastion of warmth in her entire body, "al kal chata-im va-avonos uf'sha-im...uf'sha-im she-chatasi v'she-avisi...v'shepasha-ti l'fanecha..."

_If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take._

"...v'sen chelki b'gan eden, v'zakeni la-olam haba...la-olam haba ha-tzafun la-tzadikim."

_If I should live another day, I pray the Lord to guide my way._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made some changes to Last of Days to better reflect that redirecting the plane was purposeful but _crashing_ the plane wasn't. It doesn't require a re-read but hey if you wanna. 
> 
> The [transliteration](http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/364287/jewish/The-Viduy-Confession-Prayers.htm) I found for the [deathbed vidui](https://98c1eb97-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/viduivariations/file-cabinet/shortvidui.jpg?attachauth=ANoY7co5f26GkZM8FJNtoatxvI1cW8tTeTbLEXeMp0gHnaqPOI7fxXjLKXKP8oBGLw9fKKh-EMQ-c0XW7Q79fhQw_9ck70ZWNtydLsAExHIoJ3-pHZaU3iJdDGI0sb7XWX0rWX9e6xWepksnYC9S02Fn9x4gSRuN9sWDz9i_3LA_v21JWGu-8CPM8Z1bL7rXTcIxBBGsNGrNPquDY4acf3HA4pnEHkks0ttomx6gGbDwD0q62Q6lSWE%3D&attredirects=0&d=1) was not in the style I'm familiar with, so I busted out my Grammar for Biblical Hebrew and tinkered with it a little because...I'm a huge masochist, I guess. Fair warning that I struggle with Hebrew and I can only hope that it's readable.


	3. Ridiculous Voices

When Steve wakes up, he's surprised that he can still see the sunlight through the windshield. 

He blinks, and it's a lightbulb. 

There's noise to his left, and he's about to ask Peggy what she thinks it is when he realizes that he's rolled over onto his back, and Peggy is no longer beside him. 

The rest of his environment registers as he tries to process her absence. There's a single blanket over him rather than a layered cocoon; he's laying on something a lot softer than the floor of the Valkyrie. The room is painted a very ugly green, and the noise to his left is a radio, playing a baseball game.

"Peggy?" he calls, softly, and when there's no response, "Peggy?" a little louder.

Still nothing. He moves his left arm, then his right; when they obey his commands easily he tries his legs, and then his torso. He sits up without a problem, not even an ache, which only sends another tingle of worry through his body. 

There's a soft knock on his door, and he gets his legs over the side of the bed and his feet brushing the floor by the time it peeks open. 

"Captain Rogers, good morning," his visitor says, delicate and bright. "Or, good afternoon, rather. My name is Christine, I'm your nurse."

"Good afternoon," Steve returns automatically, trying not to make it too obvious that he's sizing her up; _something_ about her feels off to him, but just like with the room, he can't quite put his finger on what. "Where am I?"

"You're in a recovery room in New York City," Christine replies, which is just vague enough to be worrisome.

"Where's the woman who was with me?"

"Agent Carter is alive and recuperating in another room," Christine says. 

"Can I see her?" Steve asks, shifting his weight onto his feet and rising. He can stand just fine, thankfully. 

"Um, I'm not sure if she's awake yet. Why don't you sit down?" Christine asks blithely, and just a little too quickly.

"I would like to see her, please," Steve says, like a challenge, finally meeting her eyes.

"How about you let me take your vitals, and then I'll ask the doctor if it's okay?"

"How long have I been out?" Steve asks, stepping back as she begins to approach him.

"Well, it's July now, so..." Christine says, and there's a note of reluctance in her briskness. "If you would..."

"Four months? We've been unconscious for that long? How are we still alive?"

"That serum sure is something, is our guess. Now please--"

"How did you know about that?" Steve asks, his eyes narrowing. No one outside the auspices of the SSR was privy to information about Project Rebirth, and even among those within, few had access to every detail.

"That information was declassified while you were unconscious. Captain, I really do have to insist..."

"With all due respect, ma'am," Steve interrupts, "I'm not going to agree to anything until I see Agent Carter."

Christine's mouth pinches shut, but to Steve's mild relief she looks more worried than angry. "One moment, Captain."

She turns on her heel, heading back out the door. Steve hears a lock click as soon as she shuts it, and he goes to the wall opposite his bed, rapping his knuckles against it.

It's hollow. The already small chance that this is a real hospital thins dramatically. He could punch it down, make a break for it, but if Peggy _is_ here then she's as good as a hostage right now. He has to get to her first before he does anything drastic.

Or do something drastic to get to her. He pads over to the window quickly, and pulls it open; it's about three feet away from the brick of the building next to it and several stories up, but it's a real window, at least. They seem to want him whole and here; maybe he can leverage that...

"...a liner to right, and it gets past Rizzo," the radio chatters on. "Three runs will score. Reiser heads to third. Durocher’s gonna wave him in. Here comes the relay but they won’t get it. Pete Reiser with an inside-the-park grand slam! Oh my goodness. The crowd is going absolutely wild..."

Steve frowns. That...was an oddly specific play to happen twice, even in four years. They'd been at a game where that happened; he remembers because Rebecca had jumped out of her seat in excitement and spilled her entire box of peanuts all over him.

"The Dodgers take the lead here, eight to four. Oh, Doctor! Everyone is on their feet. What a game we have here today, folks. What a game, indeed.”

That was also an oddly specific turn of phrase, to tag onto the same score from that game. Aunt Win had thought it was the funniest expression; she went around liberally sprinkling "Oh, Doctor!" into her speech for two weeks, and still referred to it even months later. Steve flexes his hand against the windowsill, biting his bottom lip.

If it's July of 1945, why are they playing a game from May of 1941?

The memory of the universe opening up above the Tessarect suddenly comes back to him, and his body goes cold. There really wasn't any telling the full extent of that thing's capabilties. He'd seen Hydra weapons powered by the Tessarect disappear people into thin air, not even leaving ashes, but as Bucky had once pointed out, those people had to have gone _somewhere_ , right? Bucky knew more about this kind of physics and chemistry stuff, and Steve suddenly wishes he'd actually tried to understand Bucky's babbling about time dilation and space being relative instead of just enjoying the sound of him talking so animatedly, because if the Tessarect had somehow warped reality around him and Peggy, maybe they could--

"Captain Rogers?" is the slightly panicked sound that comes from Christine as she comes back into the room; the door shuts slowly behind her, and Steve glimpses men in what must be some sort of tactical gear, even if it's the strangest example of it that he's ever seen. "Sir, please come away from that window."

"Not until you tell me where we are."

"I already told you, you're in a recovery room in New York."

"And what hospital is this?"

"You won't recognize the name. This place was built while you've been unconscious."

"A lot of things have suddenly sprouted up in four months, haven't they?" Steve almost growls.

He thinks he can detect the smallest twitch in Christine's stance. "Time marches on, Captain. Now if you'd just--"

"I am not moving from this spot until you bring Agent Carter to me," Steve says, leaning into the window just enough to imply willingness to break through it, and the speed to pull it off before she could stop him.

"Captain Rogers, _please_ be reasonable."

Steve has to resist the urge to laugh. "I wake up, alone, four months after crashing a plane into the Arctic with another agent. I have no idea where I am, who you are, or what you want with us. Now I realize that I'm being difficult, but I actually think I'm being _extremely_ reasonable."

There's a faint buzzing noise coming from Christine that she doesn't acknowledge immediately. Steve leans even more heavily and dangerously on the window, staring her down; the buzzing noise goes off again, and Christine's face screws up in frustration.

"Agent Carter is not awake yet," Christine says crisply. "I can't move her. But I can take you to her, _if_ you cooperate."

"What do you want me to do?" Steve says, pointedly. 

"Come away from the window first. Second, we would really rather you not walk. I know you're walking now," she says before he can protest. "But I'm responsible for you, and if you pass out on your feet I'm the one who's gonna get in trouble."

"And how do you propose I get there?"

"I'll have to take you in a wheelchair. Is that all right?"

"Depends on the chair."

Christine does her best to look the kind of frustrated a nurse would be when confronted with an unruly patient, but the something-else that's been there since the beginning doesn't go away. Steve sneaks a peak as she leaves the room for a third time; the black-clad men have moved out of the way of the door, and they're still gone when she comes back with the wheelchair.

It's a normal-looking enough chair, bare bones in its construction. He can't see any obvious weapons or restraints, and his physical inspection doesn't reveal any. He presses down on the seat of the chair with his hand, just to make sure pressure won't trigger anything hidden, before he cautiously sits on it, leaning forward in preparation to jump up should it be necessary. Christine sighs, a little heavily, but when he neither relaxes nor stands up she takes the handles to the chair and wheels him forward.

The outside of his room is nondescriptly blue. The corner adjacent to the hollow wall is part of another hallway, and they don't turn that way in any case. The route they do take shows off a handful of closed doors alternated with landscape paintings, and no other people. Sarah had nursed Steve through all his sicknesses at their apartment, and had declined to die in the same TB ward that had infected her, but Steve had sometimes dropped off her forgotten lunches at LICH once she switched from private duty to a hospital rotation, and he was pretty sure that they should be passing by a doctor or two, or other patients, or at the very least another nurse.

It's, thankfully, not a terribly far distance to their destination; Christine knocks on the door lightly once they've arrived, and it's opened by another young woman, a blonde this time.

"Sharon!" Christine says, her voice edging close enough to shocked for Steve to pick up on it. "Hey...I thought Georgia was...?"

"Oh, a family thing came up and she had to take off," Sharon says. "I only just relieved her a second ago." She glances down, flashing a smile at Steve that seems both eerily and warmly familiar. "Captain Rogers, it's nice to meet you. My name is Sharon."

He takes the hand she offers him gingerly. "You're a nurse?"

"Sometimes," she says with a lopsided smile, as she draws her hand back. "Well, let me get out of your way..."

She does, and Christine pushes Steve into the room.

Peggy's bed is about chest level to Steve in the chair, and he forces the pit in his stomach to stay there before it can travel up to his throat. She's so pale, and still; the bed makes her look so small and please God _no_ he just lost Bucky, he can't lose Peggy too.

"All her vital signs are good," Sharon says; he hadn't noticed her coming around to the foot of Peggy's bed and seeing the look on his face. "See, she's not attached to anything that'd keep her alive if she couldn't do it herself. We're really just waiting for her to wake up." Steve somehow manages to nod, briefly wondering what sort of machine could do that for a person, and Sharon offers him a smile that's wry and somehow almost affectionate. "You can...touch her, if you want."

He's pretty sure she's aiming for kind, but she's only giving herself away. Steve and Peggy's romance was known but not spoken about openly within the SSR; Peggy was technically one of his supervisors, and such a relationship was officially inappropriate. He supposed that the position they'd been found in could potentially be compromising, but it would be normal for any two people to huddle for warmth like that; it didn't necessarily imply--

Did they know about Bucky, too? As far as Steve was aware, no one but Howard knew the truth about their relationship, but these people know about Peggy and the serum, God knows what else they--

"It's all right, I promise," Sharon encourages, watching Steve hesitate.

Christine pushes Steve a little closer to the bed, and he scoots himself even closer. Peggy's arms are covered by her blanket, and after a moment of touching her upper arm atop the cotton, he slides his hand underneath it and seeks out hers, carefully locking their fingers together when he finds it.

When she presses her thumb into his palm, he makes no indication of it.

Sharon straightens up from where she's set her hands on the footboard and walks over to Christine, who leads her into the doorway. Their voices slip into whispers as Steve leans over close to Peggy's head, blocking their view of Peggy cracking her eyes open. Steve glances right and left and right again; _I don't know what's going on._ Peggy glances down at her body and heaves a small, almost noiseless sigh; _I'm not at full strength._ Not shocking; her serum was an early version of Dr. Erskine's work and not as potent as Steve's.

"Nurse? Sharon?" Steve says; the blonde seems more willing to humor him than her colleague.

"Yes?" He doesn't turn around, but he can tell that she's turned her head to look at him.

"Can _you_ please tell me where we are? Or at least what organization you're with?"

There's a pause, and Steve thinks he hears that buzzing noise again. "We're...we're with SHIELD. It's an offshoot of the SSR. A daughter agency."

Oh good. _That_ will be easy enough to test. "Eyskya'takenha' ka?"

"...I'm, I'm sorry?"

They're definitely not affiliated with the SSR. Every outsider scheduled to rendezvous with the Howling Commandos is taught the codephrase, _Will you help me?_ , and the response, "tekatlihwateytsa'as", _I am helpful_. These women are probably with Hydra, or the Wehrmacht, and either way he has to take Peggy and run.

"Captain Rogers?" Sharon asks, stepping back into the room, Christine close behind her.

Steve shoots out of his chair at an angle and then kicks it back, so the chair plows into them. He can hear the commotion of the two women falling, either from the hit or from trying to avoid it, as he wraps his arms around Peggy and hauls her up into them, blanket and all. This room doesn't have a window, but if he can make it back to the room he woke up in...

"All agents, Code 13!" Christine yelps into a radio that she must have drawn from her pocket, as Steve leaps over the tangled mess on the floor and darts back down the hallway the way she had brought him. The doors he had counted as a means to get back to his room are being yanked open, the empty hallways suddenly filling up with more people in black, and he picks up as much speed as he can with the added weight of his girlfriend. Peggy is stiff as a board in his arms, her body a makeshift shield against the men advancing on them from the front, her legs and feet held rigidly out to the side so Steve can shove them like a battering ram into the people coming from their left, sending them crashing into the wall.

Steve dashes back into the room he had woken up in and slams the door shut with his shoulder, managing to hold it closed long enough to put Peggy on her feet and let her lock it. The radio goes flying through the window, shattering the glass, and Steve sticks his head out into the negative space, searching for an obstacle he's almost sure is forming, if not already there.

He doesn't expect it to come in the form of an arrow shooting straight down past the left side of his face, an inch away from piercing his ear. Peggy turns to him when he yelps; he barks out "Archer!" and flips over, so he can see to the roof, and he can only make out the silhouette of the bowman before he hears the door behind him being kicked open.

Peggy is ready, adrenaline substituting for strength; the blanket is stretched between her hands and it comes down on the first assailant, catching him around the neck and slamming him face-first into the floor. The next man stepping over him is met with the heel of her palm smashing into the underside of his nose, which sends him careening backwards into a third attacker. Steve runs forward, grabbing Peggy by the arms and dragging her into his, and throws them both sideways into the hollow wall, breaking it into pieces underneath them as they land on the floor.

This gambit doesn't pay off. They scramble to their feet, but too late; what feels like a swarm of black-armored men have already surrounded the room on this side, and each one of them with a weapon drawn. Steve pushes Peggy behind him--maybe she can get past the archer on the roof if he distracts this unit well enough--and sweeps his gaze across the line ahead of him, daring each man to be the first to attack, when he hears a distant yelp of "Wait!" in Sharon's voice, and a man's voice chime in with "Stand down!"

The weapons relax immediately, the sudden movement making Steve and Peggy flinch back all the same. The crowd shifts a bit in spots, allowing for Sharon to push through, and a moment later the man who had given orders--tall, black, an eyepatch--joins her. 

"Director..." Sharon starts. 

"Don't waste it on me, Agent 13," the man says, putting up a hand. "It'll be more useful for them," he says, using the same hand to gesture to Steve and Peggy. 

"Who are you people?" Peggy demands, as she pushes her way back to Steve's side. "What the hell is going on?"

"Please," Sharon says, stepping forward, and Steve and Peggy start back again. "I'm sorry. I'll explain everything. If you could--"

"We're not going anywhere," Steve cuts in. 

"No, you don't have to, just...if you could just sit down. This is going to take awhile."

There's movement behind them, and they whip around to see the agents that Peggy had injured staggering to their feet, with each other's help. They fall back harmlessly just as the rest of their unit did.

"Please," Sharon says, schooling firmness and request and apology into one sound. 

Peggy grips Steve's arm and leans into his back. If they go back to the room, they're that much closer to the window, and if the archer has stood down just as the others have...

"All right," Steve says, reading her thoughts in the pressure of her fingers. "Let's hear it."

Sharon and the man giving orders follow them as they back into the room, picking their way over the debris; the unit surrounding them falls back, though they don't disperse. The man immediately goes to block the window--a setback, but Steve's pretty sure he can take him--and Sharon gestures for Steve and Peggy to sit on the bed, while she stands before them with her hands clasped in front of her.

"First, let us apologize for the...for all this," Sharon says, gesturing to the room around them. 

"We thought it would be best to break it to you slowly," the man chimes in. "But clearly this was the wrong approach."

"Break what to us?" Steve demands. "Who are you people?"

"I wasn't lying before," Sharon says. "This _is_ SHIELD, the Strategic Hostilities Intervention, Espionage, and Logistics Division of the United Nations. That's like...the League of Nations, except more countries are involved now. This is the director." She gestures to the man. "His name is Nick Fury. And SHIELD _is_ an offshoot of the SSR. Just...much grander in scope."

"We don't believe you," Peggy snarls. 

"The code you used, before," Sharon says. "It hasn't been used in...in awhile. I didn't know how to respond; we aren't taught that anymore."

"We've been gone for four months," Steve growls. "How much can possibly change in four months?"

"Four months," Fury mutters, and he rubs at his patched eye. "Goddamn. Four months."

"It's been longer?"

"Enough of all this," Peggy cuts in. "Tell us who you really are, _now_."

Fury glances at Sharon, looking almost resigned, and Sharon inhales deeply. 

"All right. There's...there's no way to say this without it sounding completely insane, so." She squares her shoulders. "Captain Rogers, Agent Carter. I'm Agent 13, with SHIELD Special Service. My name is Sharon Carter." She looks Peggy directly in the eyes. "You are my great-aunt."

"You're right, that does sound completely insane," Peggy retorts immediately, ignoring the little flash of her brother's face she suddenly sees mirrored in Sharon's.

"I know. But it's true. My grandfather is Michael Carter."

"Michael died," Peggy spits. "He never even had children, let alone grandchildren."

Sharon shakes her head. "Grandpa's death was purposely misreported. He was part of an undercover operation, and they were supposed to make it seem like he was dead. He came home at the end of the war."

"That's the best story you could come up with?" Steve snarls, gripping Peggy's hand.

"It's not a story," Sharon says, and draws in another fortifying breath. "And I can prove it." She looks back at Peggy, internally wincing at the look she's being given. "Your full name is Margaret Elizabeth Alexandra Carter."

"That doesn't--"

"Everyone called you Peggy except for your Granny Maggie," Sharon continues steadily, and Steve feels Peggy's resolve falter the tiniest bit. "Your mother's mother. _She_ called you Little Maggie. Grandpa--your brother, Michael--he called you Pegsalot, which upset you because you liked Sir Galahad better, but he said Pegahad sounded silly. Absolutely no one was ever allowed to call you Daisy. You said you weren't a flower."

Peggy's grip on Steve spasms and digs in harder.

"Your favorite book when you were a kid was _Alice in Wonderland_. You used to make Grandpa pretend he was the Queen of Hearts so you could rescue your dolls from getting decapitated by him. And, uh...there was one time that he got hit by a car, and you thought he was going to die, so you held his hand and told him you were going to miss your "best brother"." Sharon pauses, grimacing at how white Peggy's face has gone. "Can I...I can show you a picture of him."

Peggy glares at her, but makes no movement. Sharon reaches behind herself slowly, digs through a back pocket, and produces a thin wallet; she goes forward delicately as she flips to the right sleeve, and holds it out to Peggy, who takes it with as much firmness as her hesitance will allow.

It's a color photo, which is the first thing that throws her. A young girl, very clearly Sharon at about the age of eight, stands beaming next to a man his late 60s; his hair is white, and his face is wrinkled, but the cut of his jaw, the shape of his eyes, the way he hooks his pointer finger around Sharon's rather than choosing to _hold her hand properly, Michael! She's going to run off if you don't keep a good grip on her!_

"My parents died when I was a baby," Sharon says, as Peggy stares. "So Grandpa took me in. It's just been me and him almost my whole life. We lived in England, at the house in Hampstead; he inherited it from your parents. I moved back to the States to go to school, and I was able to bring him over, later on. We still own the house, though."

"Is he--?" Peggy hiccups, before she can stop herself, and Steve's arm wraps surreptitiously around her side.

"He's still alive," Sharon says, a little thickly. "But he's not...he's got dementia. Um, Alzheimer's. But he might...he might recognize you, if he saw you. For a little bit at least."

Peggy considers the picture for a beat longer, running her thumb over her brother's aged face, before the absurdity of it all gets to her and she shoves the wallet back into Sharon's hand. "This isn't real."

"I know this is hard to believe," Sharon says, with a wince.

"This is _impossible_ ," Peggy insists. "He...Michael died. _We_ died."

"Dr. Erskine's work was designed to keep the recipients alive," Fury says, echoing what Erskine had told both Peggy and Steve before administering their respective serums. "They seem to've worked a whole lot better than anyone planned on, though."

"What do you mean by that?" Steve demands. "How long have we been out for?"

Fury inhales. "Sixty-six years."

"Sixty-six..." Peggy whispers; any leftover adrenaline immediately recedes, and just like on the plane she's suddenly unbearably cold.

"Today is July 22nd of 2011," Sharon says quietly. "Happy belated birthday," she aims at Steve with an absurd little laugh.

"An oil rig found the Valkyrie and called it into us," Fury says, as Steve's face drains of color. "We can show you the process of how we...thawed you out, if you'd like. Most of it was filmed. The equipment's still around, too, obviously."

"Sixty-six," Peggy repeats faintly.

"I'm sorry," Sharon says, even more quietly. "I know this is...a lot to swallow."

"Is there _anyone_ who can, can corroborate your story?" Steve demands, tightening his grip on Peggy's waist as he feels her start to tremble against his side. "Anyone _we_ would know? Or is everyone conveniently dead?"

His voice cracks on the last word. Peggy's hand clumsily slaps down onto his thigh and squeezes.

"Or...or demented?" he stammers, still vaguely trying to sound in control.

Sharon glances at her boss, obviously hesitating to speak. Fury considers her for a second, and then rises, excusing himself for a moment. Sharon hovers over them for the several seconds that he's gone, obviously wanting to say something or offer the woman she claims as a relative some comfort, and not knowing how to do so or if she'll be aggressively rejected. Steve only feeds that worry by glaring up at her, an effective camouflage for how nauseated he feels right now; Peggy, for her part, seems very fixated on one particular spot on the floor.

Fury knocks to signal his return, and all three of them jerk their heads toward him at the same time.

"There _is_ somebody," Fury confirms. "But we'll have to take you for a ride to get to him."

"Who is it?" Steve demands. 

"Gabriel Jones is still alive and living in Flatbush. He's almost ninety years old and not in the best health, but he's got his own mind. The family would rather we not move him, so you'd have to be willing to go someplace with us."

Peggy finally looks up at Steve, shock giving a little bit of way back into practicality. If what these people are saying is true, this is the way to prove it, and, potentially, travel gives them a better chance of escape if it proves itself necessary. 

Steve gives an almost imperceptible nod of his head; he'd been thinking much the same. 

"Take us to him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My longtime readers know that I write Steve as 1/4 Oneida through his paternal grandmother, and I've always had it in my head that he used the language like the historical [code-talkers](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_talker) did. Since I don't speak Oneida, I rely on what's available through an online dictionary/grammar, so please take my transliterations with a grain of salt and forgive the stilted conversation.
> 
> Since SHIELD is an international rather than American agency in this 'verse, I changed the "H" to better represent that. 
> 
> The French variant of Margaret, "Marguerite", is also the French word for "daisy", hence it's potential as a nickname.
> 
> Color photography existed during WWII but wasn't really widespread until the 70s.


	4. Out in the Slipstream

It takes some time, apparently, to get transportation together; it at least feels like hours until Fury comes back with the news that they're ready to go. Sharon looks notably relieved for things to get moving; she obviously doesn't know what to say to Peggy or Steve now that she's delivered her news and they've yet to accept it. The closest they've come to conversation is when Sharon, noticing Peggy's shakiness, offered to have a drink brought to her and wound up having to explain what a Gatorade is, and that only took a few minutes, tops.

Peggy wound up refusing the offered beverage, even after Sharon drank some of it to prove that it wasn't drugged.

Most of the unit has left now that Steve and Peggy appear to no longer be flight risks, and even more of them disperse after Fury gestures for Steve, Peggy, and Sharon to follow him, but they go to guard the windows and, when they get down to the first floor, the doorways leading outside. Steve glares them down as much as he can for his thoughts being elsewhere, and mutters "They're sure not exactly reassuring me that we're not your prisoners."

"They're not for keeping you in, Captain," Fury says. "They're for keeping the paps away."

"Paps?"

"Paparazzi."

Steve mentally runs through the Italian words he had picked up from his neighbors as a kid, and then from the civilians he met in the country proper. "...[Mosquitoes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paparazzi)?"

"They're independent photographers," Sharon explains. "Extremely invasive independent photographers. So...about as annoying as mosquitoes, yeah."

"SHIELD wasn't the only organization that oil rig called when they found you," Fury says, clearly very irritated by that fact. "The vultures've been hovering around the building ever since we brought you here, tryin' to get pictures."

"That why you got that archer on the roof?"

He doesn't mean it to be funny, but there's obvious amusement in Fury's tone when he answers. "He's probably kept them from getting too close, yes."

Accordingly they're not led out onto the street, but deeper down into the building, into an underground garage. The vehicles surrounding them are recognizable as cars, but they're not like any that Steve and Peggy have ever seen, not even Schmidt's car (the hope that Phillips had kept that car as war booty flits through Peggy's brain). These cars are taller and sleeker, and they chirp and flash lights when you unlock them with a button from twenty feet away, as Steve and Peggy find out when they almost startle into a defensive position when it happens.

"Sorry," says one of the agents in black, a brunette woman who introduced herself as Maria Hill when she brought the Gatorade, along with some socks and shoes and face-obscuring sunglasses for them to wear outside, but they're still a little more reticent to get into the car than they initially were.

"Seatbelts," Sharon chides, with an awkward smile, once they're finally settled. Steve and Peggy watch her, suspicious of being strapped in over their shoulders; she pulls on the belt proper, showing its elasticity, and they reluctantly trust her on it.

It's another forever getting out of the garage, first making it past the rows of cars and then the tunnel leading out onto the street. Peggy, in the middle between Steve and Sharon, presses closer to Steve so she can watch the concrete flying by, trying alongside him to get a sense of how deep underground they are. They do seem to be moving on an upward slope, which is reassuring, but it's still a bit of a shock when they're suddenly in daylight.

"Should be far enough away now for the mosquitoes to not have followed," Sharon quips.

It looks like New York. Not quite like what Steve remembers, but it's the same layout, the same...energy. A few of the buildings he recognizes, too, and the view of the water they're driving alongside feels eerily familiar. He glances at Peggy, who frowns worriedly at the view; she hadn't spent very much time in New York, but even with her limited experience she's clearly getting the same feeling. It intensifies when they pass by signs directing traffic to the Brooklyn Bridge, but takes a blow when Fury directs Maria to drive past it.

"We're not taking the Bridge?"

"The Carey's a more direct route," Fury says, glancing in the rearview mirror. "The, ah...the [Brooklyn-Battery](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn%E2%80%93Battery_Tunnel). They renamed it last year."

"Oh, so they finished it, huh?" Steve says, still trying to cling to disbelief and sound a little incredulously snide.

"Sir," Maria pipes up, sounding concerned, "you're sure you wanna use that route?"

"Yeah," Fury says, with maybe something like a grimace. "Diving seems to be working out better than wading."

They catch Maria frowning in the rearview mirror, but she makes no move to contradict him. Steve and Peggy return to watching the scenery as much as they can; most of their route is taken up by underpasses and tunnels that block the view. The alleged Carey/Brooklyn-Battery tunnel takes the longest, and despite his firm commitment to skepticism Steve feels his heart starting to beat louder and faster. Peggy must hear it, or at least sense it, because she hooks her pinky around his wrist.

They exit the tunnel into a toll booth and then a highway, and Steve almost doesn't want to look. His peripheral vision betrays him, though, forcing him to acknowledge the fact that he recalls some of the buildings to his left as belonging to Carrol Gardens, where the Barnes had lived and where Steve himself had gone to stay after his mother started coughing up blood and consequently ordered him to leave home. He steels himself, his wrist tensing under Peggy's finger, and forces his head to turn right.

It takes a moment, but a few brick structures look like something he's seen before, from a different angle, and the pounding spreads from his heart to his stomach. He's not entirely willing to take the possibility of all this being an extremely elaborate ruse off the table, but it's dangerously close to falling off by itself.

He sees Sharon watching him worriedly, and turns his head so he looks directly in front of him.

The road they're on passes by Greenwood, but too far away from the cemetery for Steve to confirm if they're _actually_ near the place his father's parents are buried, and from there nothing catches his eye; Steve hadn't had much reason or means to head into Flatbush. That eases the dread building up in his body only slightly before Maria announces that they're at the Jones' building, and as she drives around looking for a place to park the thought that they might actually be seeing Gabe Jones in a few minutes replaces it. Peggy gives up on pretense, takes her pinky finger away, and grabs his hand.

Parking is found not too far from the building, and Sharon slides out of the car first, to let Peggy and Steve follow. It surprises but doesn't shock her when it takes a few seconds past Fury and Maria also exiting the vehicle for her companions in the backseat to make their way onto the sidewalk. It would be sweet, watching Peggy slip her arm through Steve's, if it wasn't obvious how desperately both of them needed the support. She watches them as they regard Fury calling into the building with stubbornly utmost suspicion, and how they inch their way backwards when someone young appears in the vestibule to let them in.

"I was startin' to get worried, sir," the young man addresses Fury congenially, before turning his smile to acknowledge Maria, and Sharon, and finally Steve and Peggy, to whom he offers his hand. "Hey there. I'm Antoine Triplett, and I am, in fact, a SHIELD agent," he says; Fury had advised him on the phone that full disclosure seems to be the best approach. "But I'm _here_ because Gabe Jones is my grandfather." He waves for them to follow him inside, and they do. "Just happened to be here on vacation when they found you guys," he continues, as he leads them down a hallway. "Me and Grandpa were watching the news when it happened. It's hard to get an 89-year-old psyched about anything, but he damn near jumped out of his chair when they said you two had heartbeats. He woulda busted his hip _again_ over you guys." He smiles at Steve and Peggy, and then glances away when he sees how sick they look, pushing open a door that's already slightly ajar. "Anyway, he knows you're coming, so don't worry about shocking him into his grave or anything."

It's not Gabe who greets them immediately, but a woman in her 50s, though Steve and Peggy can immediately see the resemblance as she comes forward to clasp and shake their hands. On the wall behind her they can see, amongst what must be family photos, a framed picture of the Howling Commandos.

"Everyone, this is my mom."

"Dominique Triplett. It's an honor to meet you both," she says, looking as pleasantly flabbergasted as they are nauseatingly; they hear a trace of a French accent in her voice, and Peggy recalls Gabe devotedly writing letters to a girl he met in France, starry-eyed despite the guys' teasing. "Papa told me so many stories about you when I was growing up; it's just so unbelievable to me that you're actually here..."

"The, the feeling is mutual," Peggy says, and Dominique lets out an uncomfortable little laugh. 

"Well, don't let me keep...Papa!" she turns to call down a hallway. "Papa, they're here!" She glances back at Steve and Peggy, and then gestures for them to follow her. She's a few steps ahead of them by the time Peggy, having never let go of Steve's arm, squeezes it to the point of pain, and they shuffle stiffly after Dominique.

The hallway opens up to a small but spacious living room, playing home to a TV set in an entertainment center, a small bookshelf, a couch, and, in the corner facing them, an overstuffed dark blue recliner where an elderly man sits, plastic tubing hooked around his face linking his nose to a blue tank of something to his right.

"Well I'll be damned," the man says, locking eyes with them as Dominique ushers them into the room ahead of her. His voice is slow and loud to compete with hearing loss; it's rusty with age, but the original substance still shows underneath. "It's real good to see you again, Cap. Ma'am." He pauses, seeming to recall something, and then smiles knowingly. "Tekatlihwateytsa'as."

Steve sits down, hard, on the couch. Peggy sinks down slower, but no less heavily.

"Heard they gave you a scare over at SHIELD," Gabe continues, reaching up to adjust his hearing aides, so he can catch whatever they're going to say at that distance. "That place ain't been the same since I retired."

"You...you worked with them? With SHIELD?" Peggy stutters.

"Hell yeah. All us Commandos did. Well, all us stateside Commandos did; it was kinda hard to get Monty and Jacques over here for the initial set-up, but they put in what they could from home."

"So...so this really is..." Steve begins.

"It's all real, Cap," Gabe says, with the saddest smile he can muster. "It's July of 2011 and you're finally home."

_Home._

"Cap?"

"Steve?"

"Captain Rogers. _Captain Rogers_."

"Steve!"

Steve vaguely feels himself being shaken, and suddenly he's fully brought back to awareness of existing in this particular time and place. He blinks, over and over, until he has to stop before his mind slips backwards again; he looks toward Peggy on impulse, and almost slumps when he sees her colorless face.

"You with us, Captain?" Fury asks, and Steve finally notices how everyone in the apartment has crowded into the living room around him.

"I'm, I'm...I'm fine. I'm here." Peggy's hand is on his shoulder, and he shoves his hand into it so their fingers interlock. "I'm here." Now is no time to fall apart. Not when she's here and she needs him.

"You need something?" Antoine asks. "Tea or booze or..."

"Oh you know, I was just in the middle of making lunch," Dominique says. 

"They haven't eaten yet," Sharon says. "They should probably have something light..."

"Oh that's fine. I was just making some [labouyi bannann](http://haitiancooking.com/recipe/labouyi-bannann-plantain-porridge/), that should be all right..."

"Did I ever tell you guys about that stuff?" he addresses Steve and Peggy, as Dominique gestures for the SHIELD agents to follow her back into the kitchen. 

"I don't, I don't think so," Peggy says.

"I think I recognize the name," Steve tacks on lamely. 

"Well it's delicious, you guys'll love it. It's not heavy, either, so." He nods at Sharon's retreating form. "We're not living ration-to-ration anymore. They call us a "post-scarcity society" now. There's still an awful lot of starving people for all that, but..."

"So you've...you've done well for yourself, it seems," Peggy says, for lack of anything else.

Gabe bobs his head. "I've had a pretty good run, I guess."

"What all have you been...been doing, with yourself?" Steve asks a man he, for all intents and purposes, saw yesterday. "You married your French girl, it looks like..."

"Yep," Gabe says, just as starry-eyed as Peggy remembers him. "When the war ended. We won, by the way."

"Yeah, we...we kinda put that together," Steve laughs, too hollow to even feel disappointed that he's not more elated over the fact. Peggy makes a noise that indicates her similarity.

"Three months after you guys disappeared. Well, we won in _Europe_. Took another couple months to beat Japan."

"Were you there? In Japan?"

"Nah, they sent us back to France to clear out any last Hydra holdouts. They took that cut-off-one-head bullshit real serious, but we're pretty sure we killed or caught 'em all. Even flipped some of them to our side."

"Good, good," Peggy breathes.

"And...yeah. I stayed in France with Dernier for a bit. Tracked down my Alice and made an honest woman of her. I was actually gonna stay there, in France, but Stark called me up in '46 and said they're transforming the SSR into this SHIELD thing, and do I wanna be part of it? So back I went."

"So...SHIELD is...what, exactly?" Steve asks.

"The SSR, but bigger. You know, after the war, a lot of countries were all "Hey, we don't really want this to happen again, so let's all join one big club and try to work together from now on"."

"The _United_ Nations." Steve glances down the hall to where Sharon is. "They told us."

"Yeah. So they're putting this whole thing together, and they decide they want a fighting force to...basically do what we were doing in the war; put down rogue agents that no one else can handle by themselves. They got DumDum to lead it for awhile, almost twenty years if I recall correctly. I stayed until...what was it, '86?"

"You retired in '87, Grandpa," Antoine calls from the kitchen.

"'87, then. And Morita stuck around until...I don't know, sometime in the 60s. Got sick of shooting people for a living and started shooting movies, instead." He grins at what obviously must have been an in-joke between the two of them.

"Are they all...?" Steve can hardly bring himself to ask, and his worst fears are confirmed when the grin slides off Gabe's face.

"I'm the last one."

Peggy's breath catches in her throat. She can barely see Steve put his face in his hands through the tears forming in her eyes.

"I'm sorry, you guys," Gabe whispers, watching Steve try to get a handle on his breathing and the corners of Peggy's mouth tremble. "Hey, Nikki? Can you bring us some Kleenex or something?"

Dominique bustles back into the room with a box of tissues in her hand; she sets them on Peggy's lap before hurrying back to the kitchen, not wanting to intrude on their grief. Peggy immediately tears one out of the box and tries to push it into Steve's hand; he's immoveable for the first two tries, and on the third he opts to grab her hand instead, and wipe at his eyes with his free fingers.

 _"That's war,"_ Peggy had said just two days ago, and they should've been prepared for this, the way they should've been prepared for Bucky to die. Any of them could die at any time. There were times over the past two years when the whole unit could have died all at once. That's war.

Except this isn't war. As multiple people have told them over the past two hours, the war ended almost seventy years ago. 

Somehow it managed to take everything away from them, all the same.

"Aw come on, you two," Gabe mutters, his voice garbled, as Peggy wipes at her face and Steve looks dangerously close to doubling over. "You're gonna make an old man cry..."

Steve straightens abruptly, passing through lightheadedness on his way up. Peggy buries her face in his shoulder, her chest shuddering unevenly, and he reaches across his chest to set his hand on the back of her head, his fingers tangling clumsily, desperately in her hair.

"Were they happy, at least?" Steve somehow makes himself ask. "They all...they had good lives, all of them?"

"Well I think they did," Gabe says, and Peggy heaves her worst ragged breath, her open mouth pressing into Steve's arm to block a scream from escaping. "I mean...we all grew up. Got married if we weren't already, 'cept for Dernier, he stayed single to the end. We had kids, grandkids...Morita had his first great-grandkid a couple years before he died. Monty might have 'em, too, I dunno; he kinda disappeared after the war, didn't keep in touch real well. And hell, DumDum's probably got great-great-grandkids by now. Me and Alice, we only had Nikki here," he raises a hand towards the kitchen, and they notice just how thin and frail it is, how slowly he moves. "And she only had Antoine, who is apparently _too damn busy_ to give me a great-grandkid'a my own."

Peggy tries to giggle at his raised, accusing voice before the weight of grief crushes her completely; it comes out almost like a cough. Steve reaches automatically for the box on her lap, and hands her another tissue. 

"What about the rest of them?" Steve asks. "Not just the, the Commandos, the whole...Howard, Howard started SHIELD, you said?"

"Yeah, yeah. He was the driving force."

" _He_ ever get married?" If he can keep talking he won't fall to pieces.

"Believe it or not, he did," Gabe says, with a bit of a laugh. " _Years_ after the war ended. His wife was about...had to be at least twenty years younger than him."

"That's not surprising," Peggy murmurs, drawing the soaked tissue away from her face even as tears keep falling.

"He had a kid, too."

"You're shitting me," Steve tries to chuckle. Before Phillips had found a way to send Rosemarie off to safety, she'd had enough time to acquaint herself with most of the people in the SSR. Howard was the only person among them to notably not enjoy her company. He had seemed almost afraid of her, in fact.

"I shit you not, Cap. When you got a chance, look up Tony Stark. He's...pretty noteworthy."

They want to ask in what way, but Dominique comes back into the room with a tray of something decidedly good-smelling, sweet and gently spicy. She sets the tray on her father's lap, putting the spoon in his hand for him, and plants a fond kiss on his forehead; as she passes by Steve and Peggy she assures them that they'll be getting their food next.

"I gotta eat before I take my afternoon meds," Gabe says, digging his spoon into the dish in front of him; it's one of the few foods soft enough for him to eat. "I'm on a pretty strict schedule. She wants to make sure I take 'em on time."

"What's wrong?" Peggy asks, finally straightening up, wiping a tear off her face that is immediately replaced by another.

"Hell, what _isn't_ wrong," Gabe says, with an exasperated roll of his eyes that doesn't quite belie his sorrow over his condition. "Honestly guys, I'm fallin' apart. I'm just glad I still got all my marbles." He taps his temple with the end of his spoon. "Morita got a little senile, right at the end. Nothing too bad; he just got forgetful sometimes. But he was ninety-four; that's pretty good."

Ninety-four. Even with Gabe in front of them to provide a comparison, they can't fathom him at that age. They try to picture an elderly James Morita, and all they can come up with is a Japanese man in his early 30s squinting confusedly at them.

They're elderly too, technically. The oldest, most confused twenty-seven-year-olds in the whole world.

Dominique comes back in, this time joined by the posse of SHIELD agents; she and Sharon put trays on Steve and Peggy's lap, and Sharon, at Dominique's behest and permission, sits in the space next to Peggy. Dominique herself goes to sit atop the coffee table next to her father's chair, and the rest of them scatter around the living room, Maria and Antoine holding glasses of lemonade.

"Go on, give it a shot," Gabe says, gesturing to the bowls in front of them as emphatically as his 89-year-old hands can.

They make awkward noises approaching laughter at the attention that's suddenly turned on them, and after a moment of self-conscious hesitation they, almost in sync, dip their spoons into the bowls, and take their first bite of food in the twenty-first century.

"Well?"

It's something of a porridge. There's a vague banana taste to it, not as sweet as they recall, but there's loose sugar added to make up for it, as well as cinnamon and some other spice, and coconut, which both of them last remember smelling in a [field hospital](http://www.meritfood.co.th/coconutInsightsDetail.asp?knowledgeID=21).

"It's good," Steve says, biting back the sting of yet another memory. 

"It's new," Peggy offers, attempting a smile. "I like it."

"Yeah," Gabe says, smiling a bit sagely. "There's a lot of new stuff nowadays that you're gonna like."

"I hope so," Steve says around his next spoonful, flicking his gaze over to Fury. "Because I guess we're stuck here?"

"Time-travel isn't one of our modern marvels," Fury confirms, and even though they knew better than to hope, the confirmation dashes something inside them. "Yet, in any case."

"So what happens to us now?" Peggy asks, dragging her spoon through her food. "Where do we... _go_? What are we expected to do now?"

"Well, both of your terms are up, obviously, and--as bizarre as this is gonna feel--you've aged out of being able to re-enlist anyway, so you won't be going back into your respective militaries. You _are_ owed [MIA benefits](http://myarmybenefits.us.army.mil/Home/Benefit_Library/Federal_Benefits_Page/Captive__POW__MIA_Entitlements.html?serv=147), and a lot of 'em, so that can serve as your source of income while you...get your heads together."

"Am I...I suppose I'm going back to England immediately."

Fury bobs his head from side to side as Steve puts his hand protectively around Peggy's shoulders. "As of right this second, because of the circumstances, you actually had a special emergency medical visa issued to you while you were unconscious. Considering that, I probably shouldn't've let you leave the SHIELD building, but whatever. ICE can kiss my ass."

"This was a medically necessary off-site visit to benefit her psychological care," Maria offers, somewhat loudly; Fury smirks at her.

"And once I'm...once that visa is up?" Peggy asks, electing to not ask what the ICE is right this moment. 

"There is absolutely no shortage of congresspeople who would support a private bill of citizenship for you, if that's what you wanted. That petition would keep you in the US while it was pending. Or, you can join SHIELD; that'll fast-track a [G-visa](https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/other/employee-of-international-organization-nato.html)\--that's a type of work visa--to you. Or there's always Door Number Three: you two get married, and you can pursue permanent residency, and later citizenship, from there. You do that before the medical visa expires and you probably won't have to leave the country at any point; I'm not sure about that, though."

"Y'all were planning on getting hitched anyway, right?" Gabe says, grinning behind his spoon. 

"Maybe not...quite so soon," Peggy says, a small flush that has nothing to do with bashfulness on her face. Steve and Bucky had joked around about competing for her hand, but all three of them had it in their heads that Peggy would end up marrying Steve, to avoid any problematic side-eyeing. Now there's not even a semblance of choice. 

"Well apparently it's actually long overdue," Steve mutters, clinking his spoon against the bowl. 

"SHIELD will support you in whatever decision you want to make," Sharon says. 

"You gonna make them stay at the NYHQ?" Antoine asks. 

"For the moment, until housing can be arranged," Fury says. 

"I lived..." Steve says, before he can stop himself; he tries to draw back, but every eye turns to him and forces him to keep going. "Where I was staying, in Carroll Gardens. I take it that's...that's no longer available?"

There's no possible way that Aunt Win and Uncle George are still alive, he realizes with a numbness that kills his desire to keep eating, and to ever eat again. But Rebecca was born just a year before Gabe; there's a chance she might still be...

Sharon shifts so she reaches into her suit jacket, and she draws out a black rectangle that she somehow opens up into a larger rectangle. They watch her, slightly taken aback, as she taps deftly at the screen.

"We took the liberty of researching your background more thoroughly," Maria explains as Sharon sets herself up. "The...circumstances in which you woke up notwithstanding, we did figure that we'd have to get to these questions eventually."

They send her the most begrudgingly gracious looks they can muster as Sharon finds the program she's looking for, and then the information.

"The brownstone in Carroll Gardens passed from George Barnes to David Proctor in August of '46," Sharon informs him carefully, and Steve is almost 100% sure that was Rebecca's husband's name. "Mr. Proctor sold the property sometime in the 60's." He tries to muster up the strength to ask if she knows where Rebecca went, but he doesn't quite make it there before she speaks again. "Your, um, _old_ apartment, in Red Hook... _that_ building was actually bought in the 90s and turned into a museum."

"A...I'm sorry?"

"Well, there's historic value to it," Maria steps in. "The apartment building Captain America grew up in. It's a tourist draw."

"Better than the IKEA," Antoine attempts to joke.

Steve thinks about what his mother would have thought about all these most likely well-off strangers gawking at her tiny apartment, and can't decide if he wants to laugh or cry or throw up the two mouthfuls he's managed to take so far.

"You know, like I said, we do still own the house in Hampstead," Sharon says, setting her tablet down. "So there's...there is the reverse of what we discussed. You _could_ return to England, if you wanted to," she very lightly sets her hand on Peggy's, "and Captain Rogers could find a way to follow you there."

"If, if Michael's living in the States then I think I should stay here," Peggy says immediately. "At the very least until I get a sense of how he...does he know about us? Like Gabe knew?"

"I told him," Sharon says, "but he...as I said, his memory's not...he might have forgotten already."

"Oh. Yes. You did say..."

"You know what, maybe we should all just concentrate on eating for a bit," Dominique says, in the firm manner of the only mother in the room. "I'm barely involved in all this but even _I'm_ feeling like it's, this is a lot to try to take in all at once."

"Seconded," Gabe says, brandishing his spoon before he digs it into his labouyi.

"Probably wise," Fury mutters, before addressing Steve and Peggy. "In any case, you've got a few days to consider what it is you want to do. SHIELD is going to want to monitor you for at least another week, make sure that you...well, if I may be ghoulishly frank, that this right now isn't some sort of last gasp." 

Peggy gets a flash of herself and Steve suddenly breaking apart, limb by limb, until they're nothing but a pile of body parts on the floor. She glances at Steve, and even with only the corner of his eye to go on, she can tell he's envisioning something similar, and regarding the prospect in much the same way.

It wouldn't be the worst thing to happen to them today. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made Gabe the last survivor mainly because I wanted to invert the Black Guy Dies First trope. I put him in Flatbush because I like to headcanon him as being of Haitian descent, and there's a large Haitian community there. Labouyi bannann was the first recipe I found when I googled "Haitian comfort food".


	5. Appliance of Science

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some real and some bullshit science ahoy! Also some bullshit immigration/visa policies, whether they're realistic or not! #DACA
> 
>  
> 
> **TW: medical examinations; references to 40's-flavored racism, misogyny, and perisexism ******

Gabe is in fact on a _very_ strict schedule, as they barely finish eating before Dominique looks very pointedly at the clock and says, "Papa usually goes down for a nap right about now."

" _Goes down for_ ," Gabe grumbles in Steve and Peggy's direction. "I changed this girl's diapers and she talks about me like that."

"Well, you _are_ the baby," Steve tosses back automatically, and almost doesn't know why he feels sick immediately after. Gabe was indeed the youngest of the Commandos, all of twenty years old when Steve met him in Kreichsberg, and there's something nauseatingly bizarre to the realization that the man Bucky had, in his protectively teasing way, dubbed the Team Mascot now has an adult grandchild.

"You live in _my house_ , you abide by _my rules_ ," Dominique says, through a tiny grin. 

"Nikki, d'you honestly think I'm gonna be able to sleep any? After all this excitement?"

"Your friends can come back some other time, I promise."

"We've...We're sorry if we, we disrupted something," Steve says.

"Only my very busy day of _sitting_ ," Gabe mutters.

"You're getting grumpy, that means you're tired," Dominique says, a decisive note in her joking tone. 

"We should probably bring Captain Rogers and Agent Carter back to HQ before anyone's the wiser, in any case," Fury steps in. "Get a jump on the monitoring we talked about, too."

Peggy gives the briefest of touches to Steve's elbow. With less to try to assess for familiarity, she had instead noted points along the way where they could conceivably break out of the car, if necessary. "What sort of monitoring do you have in mind?"

"Your basic primary doctor visit." Peggy raises an eyebrow at him. "Blood tests, EKG, that sort of thing. It's probably a good idea to record your sleeping and eating patterns, though the main concern is, as I said, making sure you don't suddenly keel over."

"You ain't allowed to go before me," Gabe says, pointing his spoon authoritatively at them. "I'm gonna be really upset with you if you wake up after seventy years lookin' fresh as daisies and then just up and die on me."

"Yes, _sir_ ," Steve says, eyeing him with his best Captain look.

Dominique begins what can only be called bustling about the room, gathering up glasses and bowls, and the force of politeness gets Peggy and Steve to their feet, followed by the others. Antoine manages to hustle his fellow SHIELD agents towards the hallway after his mother, effectively forming a gate with his body, to afford them at least a little bit of privacy to make their good-byes.

"It really is so good to see you guys again," Gabe says, once they're close enough for him to grab onto Steve's hand, and it's a bit of a relief to feel how much strength still is in his grip. "I wish it was in a different circumstance, though..."

"Yeah, that'd...I'd prefer that, too."

"I meant it, though. There's a lot of stuff nowadays that you're gonna like."

"God, I hope so," Peggy mutters, as Gabe switches to her hand, and she squeaks when Gabe brings the back of her fingers to his mouth.

"Always wanted to do that," Gabe says, grinning cheekily up at her. "Not to try to snake your girl or anything, Cap," he says, glancing over at Steve.

"I've had stiffer competition, buddy; don't flatter yourself," Steve scoffs, and the wink he attempts to be cheeky instead serves to hold back a sudden, stinging wetness. "Hey Gabe?"

"Yeah?"

"Bucky." The name tastes like ashes, and his face screws up against its bitterness. "Did they ever...'d'they ever find him? Find a body?"

Peggy thinks she sees a little flash of guilt cross Gabe's face, before he shuts his eyes and shakes his head slowly. "People did look. Never found anything. Not even...not anything," he finishes lamely, too late to avoid being gruesome.

"Oh," slides out of Steve's mouth without him even being fully aware of it, and Peggy forgoes her curiosity to focus on not sinking down to the floor. Of course they'd found nothing. By the time the weather warmed up enough to make a search possible, Bucky had probably long since been dragged away by wild animals.

"His folks put up a memorial in Greenwood, though. If you want to go somewhere to...pay your respects."

"Thank you," Peggy pushes out of her closing throat. Gabe hasn't let go of her hand, and he squeezes it now before letting her go. As far as the Howling Commandos were concerned, Peggy and Bucky's chilly working relationship had blossomed into a deep friendship after they spent weeks lost in Germany together, keeping themselves and a war orphan alive. Peggy had gotten the feeling that some of them had figured out more than they let on; Gabe hadn't been one, but people talked.

"I'll go with you, if my keeper will let me," Gabe jokes, mock glaring in the kitcen's direction.

"As soon as we get ourselves...straightened out, we'll come by to see you again."

He winks at her, to coax out a smile, and then looks up when Dominique squeezes past her son into the living room, a tupperware container of leftovers in her hands; she gestures for Antoine to shoo his coworkers into the kitchen and preferably out the apartment door, which he dutifully does as she goes to Steve and Peggy.

"Mrs. Tripplet," Steve says, good breeding propping him up as he tries to recover from the thought of Bucky being ripped apart and devoured by wolves, "thank you, so much, for having us over on such... _incredibly_ short notice."

"You are _always_ welcome here," Dominique says kindly, firmly, and then she smiles. "So long as you call ahead." She sets the container in Peggy's hands with an aplomb that would brook no polite refusal. "I'll show you how to make this sometime."

"Thank you," Peggy giggles, a little wetly.

Dominique glances surreptitiously behind her, and then crooks her finger, beckoning Steve and Peggy to lean in near to her. "Word of advice: don't let Director Fury work you over. He's a good man," she assures, when she sees Steve and Peggy's eyebrows shoot up, "and he does good work, but he's a bit too...underhanded, for my tastes."

"I worked with him a few times, before I retired," Gabe says, his voice a little less clear as a whisper. "Tried to mentor him a bit. But he's part of a different breed. They're mostly spies there at SHIELD now, not so much soldiers anymore. Just...keep that in mind."

"Thank you," Steve says, glancing at Peggy and nodding his agreement at her frown. The manner in which they'd woken up does feel, in retrospect, suspiciously calculated. "We will."

They wave their last good-byes to Gabe, following Dominique back to the kitchen, where she stops them before they can go into the hallway.

"I really am sorry to kick you out so... _unceremoniously_ ," she finally comes up with. "It's just...he _really_ isn't doing so well, and I want to keep him on his routine as much as possible. It's keeping him going."

"No, we understand completely," Peggy whispers back, her quietness hiding a bit of the hoarseness.

"We won't come around again, if--" Steve starts.

"No, no," Dominique interrupts. "I meant it. Just call ahead, and I'll make sure you get to see him. I just wanted to...make you _aware_ , of the reality of the situation. He's..." She blinks, and wipes quickly, preemptively at her eyes. "Well, he's almost ninety years old. It's probably not gonna be long now. I'm thinking it's a good thing you woke up when you did."

She seems to get that they can't say the same, without a word having to pass from their mouths. She clasps Peggy's hand against the tupperware container, and then shakes Steve's again, and shows them out, releasing a quiet "Good luck" to follow after them.

*

The ride back is subdued. Steve somehow feels even less prepared to see the few structures he remembers than he was before, especially knowing for certain that they're now interspersed with over six decades' worth of new architecture; Peggy takes pity on him and asks that Sharon show them the contraption she had taken from her jacket, and Sharon's chatter about what a computer is and does and how many permutations of the same technology exist nowadays is a decent distraction. It's at least amusing to see Fury frown disapprovingly in the rearview mirror when Sharon admits to having a game on her tablet, despite it being "strictly" for professional purposes.

Sharon seems to want to show off for Peggy, Steve's mind finally articulates to him once Maria is close to parking the car in the underground garage, and Sharon is busy showing Peggy how to play something called _Plants vs. Zombies_. Which is sweet, he allows himself to think; everyone should want to impress his girl, especially her family, as bizarre as the thought of the relation is.

Sharon becomes all-business when they exit the car, however, and it's a quiet walk back up. The broken wall and window of Steve's room have been picked up, though obviously not yet repaired, so they're steered into the room Peggy had woken up in, which has been refashioned a bit to show off what they can only suppose, and hope, is modern medical equipment.

"How long are you proposing to keep this...monitoring going?" Peggy asks, after she and Steve seat themselves on her bed.

Fury shrugs. "Depends on how healthy you are. We should do at least a week of daily testing, we're thinking. More if something comes up."

Christine comes back into the room, looking a little brusque but otherwise none the worse for wear for her earlier encounter with Steve and Peggy; she's flanked by another, black woman. Steve has the grace to look embarrassed in Christine's direction.

"I'm sorry about before, ma'am."

"Don't worry about it," Christine deadpans. "A wheelchair's not the worst thing a patient's ever thrown at me."

Her companion laughs knowingly, and catches Steve and Peggy's eye when they look at her. "Well, hello there Captain Rogers, Agent Carter. My name is Georgia, and I _shoulda_ been your nurse earlier, but better late than never, I suppose."

"I never lied," Sharon pipes up. "The family situation that came up was just...mine, not hers."

Peggy makes a noise that might have attempted to be a laugh. Another woman, bearing a name tag identifying her as Bethany, hustles in with a clipboard, and despite Fury glaring her down announces that there are consent forms to be signed now that Steve and Peggy are fully alert and oriented.

"We can still refuse any tests, right?" Steve asks, purposely ignoring Fury's somewhat annoyed look. "I'm not gonna sign this if we're not allowed to...to revoke consent."

"You are free to decline any test or treatment at any time," Bethany answers, firm and bored, like she's done a million times before.

"And...this," Peggy says, pointing to another spot the page. " _I hereby authorize SHIELD to retain, preserve, use for scientific or teaching purposes, or dispose of at its convenience, any specimens, tissues, parts, or organs that may be removed from my body._ Why?"

"Well, lots of reasons," Christine says. "If an agent picks up a disease no one knows about, for instance. We should have a specimen to study."

"If you're thinking about your serums," Fury says, "we inherited some of the blood samples Captain Rogers gave the SSR in '42, and those are both well-preserved and _still_ being studied. You're signing a general consent form, not agreeing to be lab rats."

This should be a relief to Steve, and it would be if not for the bad taste in his mouth. He glances at Peggy, who looks back at him with the thought that she can think of no compelling reason not to sign--SHIELD very well might have already collected whatever they needed while they had been unconscious--and scratches her signature with a pen Bethany had provided. After a moment, Steve does the same with his own copy.

"So if Peggy's fine after a week, then what?" Steve directs at Fury, as Bethany breezes out of the room. If the present is out of their control, it's at least wise to consider the future. "Do we only have that long to figure out what we're doing?"

"That emergency visa is actually good for another ten months." 

"So long?" Peggy questions.

"When we found you guys, you were basically in deep-freeze comas," Georgia pipes up. "You had very slow heartbeats and brainstem function, and that was about it. Now, SHIELD's got branches all over the world, but this one has the best clinical care out of all of 'em," she allows herself to beam proudly at that, if inwardly flinching at the lack of matching bedside manner, "so that's why you were brought here. Good ol' Immigration gave us 365 days to get you to wake up," she addresses Peggy directly, "before we had to ship you back to the UK."

"So it's been two months since you found us."

Georgia bobs her head. "Y'all only took a couple weeks to start showing some minimal consciousness. Opening your eyes, following a finger," she holds up her index finger and waves it back and forth, "that sorta thing."

"I don't remember that," Steve says, frowning; Peggy shakes her head in agreement.

"Normal," Christine says. "Well. _Not unexpected_ , is probably a better way to look at it. There's nothing really "normal" about this situation, after all."

"Case in point, in the past week or so you actually both showed enough responsiveness to be able to sit up and swallow food, so we took your feeding tubes out," Georgia says. "You could even talk a bit, answer yes-or-no questions. Not very accurately, but still."

"So...how many times has... _today_ happened?" Steve asks.

"Just the once," Fury assures. "We weren't expecting this level of consciousness from you two so abruptly." He nods at the Christine and Georgia. "So if we could make sure that this isn't a particularly spectacular case of terminal lucidity..."

Georgia seems to have learned from her co-worker's missteps, and as she and Christine work she names and explains the necessity of each piece of equipment as it's applied, even ones that Steve and Peggy recognize, or can figure out. She also gets a giggle out of Peggy when it's time for her EKG and she scolds both Fury _and_ Steve to stand behind a curtain ("I run a _decent_ examination room here.") Peggy dutifully turns away when Steve submits to the same test, in the interest of equality, "which we're _supposed_ to have now," Georgia mutters.

They wonder if that's one of the new things Gabe said they're going to like. It certainly _is_ something that they've seen Sharon and Maria act as agents just as Peggy had, but without the sort of untouchable air Peggy had found necessary to cultivate. Not to mention that SHIELD is not only integrated but actually _led_ by a man of color. Is this normal everywhere in America now? Everywhere in the world? Georgia doesn't seem very secure in her assessment...

"Do you think you guys can provide a urine sample?" Christine asks.

"A...um. We...we didn't have anything to drink at Gabe's," Steve admits; Peggy tacks on an _mmhmm_.

"That's okay. We'll get you some water, let it work it's way through you first."

"You mentioned that we could see the...the defrosting process," Peggy says. "Could we do that while we're waiting for the water to...work its way through?"

The entire room looks to Fury, who shrugs. "Don't see why not."

If he knows that it's a ploy to let them explore more of this HQ, he doesn't let it on. Sharon fetches two bottles of water (Peggy takes it in good faith, this time; Sharon smiles at her), Christine leaves two plastic cups on a table in the room with instructions to fill them once they're able, and the two nurses depart with what they've already collected towards the lab, as Fury, Maria, and Sharon herd Steve and Peggy in the opposite direction.

Now that the ruse has been cancelled, the halls are no longer conspicuously empty, and a few armored security guards as well as regular agents and support staff mill about on their regular business. Some of them greet the group briefly, not stopping them but getting their attention; others don't interact, but nonetheless stare after them. Steve and Peggy do their best to take in and record every person they see, as well as memorize the route and the location of every door and window on the way. Aside from that the HQ is maddeningly nondescript, the halls lined with closed doors that must shield anything of potential value.

They're led downstairs again, but not as far down as the garage, and they stop in front of a long stretch of window glimpsing into some sort of observation room. Inside it is a large, empty clear cylindrical chamber, surrounded by and hooked up to large machines they can't hope to identify.

"We brought that," Fury says, pointing to the chamber, "to the site immediately upon getting the call that you'd been found. It's drained now, obviously, but we put you in there with a brine solution to melt the ice around you."

"You pickled us?" is all Steve can think to say.

"...Pretty much. We turned on some oxygen within that chamber, too, so you wouldn't wake up with the bends. After that, we replaced the brine with warm water to get you back to normal body temperature, and once that was accomplished we took you upstairs for coma treatment."

Peggy sets her hand on the window, not quite studying the chamber but unable to tear her eyes away from it.

"And it was coincidental?" Steve asks. "Us being found?"

"Entirely."

"There _were_ searches, right after the war," Maria says. "Howard Stark, in particular...he sunk a lot of time and money into trying to find you."

That gets a fond, aching little puff of air from Peggy, and she leans her head against her hand. Steve puts his hand on her back, between her shoulder blades, and while they're distracted Fury glances at Maria, who nods and steps away, to close the door to the stairwell.

"We searched the Valkyrie after you were removed," Fury says, turning so he leans his back against the window. "Salvaged anything still usable."

"It burned through the control panel," Steve says flatly. "Fell somewhere in the ocean. We don't know where. The equipment was pretty damaged at that point."

"We were also rather preoccupied," Peggy says, after swallowing down the sawdusty lump in her throat.

"Yeah, we figured as much. But now we know where you ended up, that narrows down the area where we have to search for it, somewhat."

"And you wanna know if we know anything about it," Steve sighs.

"We have no idea when we're gonna find this thing," Maria says, diplomatically. "We have Howard Stark's notes, but they're probably hardly exhaustive. We don't wanna accidentally set it off, or something like that."

"Don't hit it with one of its own weapons, then," Steve mutters.

"Why, what happens when you do?"

What _had_ happened. They spend a few moments trying to put their thoughts together in a way that won't make them look insane, before conceding within a half-second of each other that someone else could stand to be on the receiving end of insane today.

"It opened up...shot... _energy_ up, opened into...it was like a window. Into outer space."

"A window into _space?_ " Fury repeats, raising an eyebrow.

"Planets, stars, the whole thing. Twenty feet above our heads."

"How long was it open for?"

"Oh, God..." Peggy mutters. Killing Schmidt had been a moment out of time; she can recall enough details--Schmidt's face, Steve's hand around hers squeezing the trigger, her heart breaking and hardening all at once--to describe a century, but it feels like it was over in an instant. "Can't have been more than a minute."

"It closed by itself?" Fury asks, and both Steve and Peggy nod. "Nothing went through? Or came in?" They shake their heads. "You couldn't have gone through it? Or could you have?"

"We weren't getting that close," they say at the same time; Sharon stifles a giggle, and even Fury has to smile faintly at their synchronicity. 

"Is there anything else you can tell us about the Tessarect that we ought to know?"

"You probably _ought_ to leave it in the ocean," Peggy mutters.

"Well, that's not on the table, fortunately or no," Fury says, straightening up. "If you recall anything else, we'll need to know asap." They make vague, mildly resentful noises at him; there's a flash of light at his wrist, and he chooses to accept them for the moment as he reads the message. "This is where I take my leave of you, for the moment. World didn't stop turning."

"Clearly."

"Agent Hill," Fury says, with a jerk of his head, and Maria steps near to him. "Agent 13, if you could make sure they make it back to their room in one piece."

"Of course," Sharon says. Fury nods at her, and makes cordial good-byes to Steve and Peggy, before he heads towards the closed door, Maria trailing behind him.

"So why are you _13_ and she's Hill?" Steve asks, once they're gone.

"Oh, the Special Service is all numbers."

"And what's the Special Service do?"

"Shadowing. Surveillance. We're undercover bodyguards, basically."

"Oh."

"So do you and Michael...do you and your grandfather live here? In New York?" Peggy asks, after Steve spends a silent moment rocking on his heels.

"I'm actually based out of Washington DC," Sharon says, trying to brighten a bit. "Grandpa lives there too, in a nursing home. Um, a board-and-care home, I think they used to call 'em. They look after him so I can work."

"So you still see him often?"

"As regularly as I can. And like...I came up to New York immediately, when they found you, but I've been skyping with him almost every day. Skyping is...it's like using a phone, but with video, over the computer. So you can see each other's faces in real time." She pauses. "If you want, once everything...settles down, I might be able to set it up so you can..."

"Oh. Oh, yes. That sounds..." There is nothing Peggy wants more right now, or wants less; Sharon seems to understand, because she gestures for Peggy to take a sip of her water. Steve follows suite, once she does. "So it's just you two? No...no one else?"

When did her parents die? She hadn't seen them for a few years before the Valkyrie crash; giving up her post at Bletchley Park in favor of the SSR had caused several huge fights and promised more of them, prompting her to keep her physical distance. She hadn't even been able to tell them about nearly dying, not when the serum that cured her Wilson's disease was strictly classified. Amanda had written as regularly as war would allow, including the perennially taciturn Harrison's concern in every postscript, and Peggy had responded dutifully but coolly. Now her shaking knees scold her that she should have forgiven them everything; told them that she understood that they wanted a safe, easy life for her, and she appreciated it even if it wasn't what she wanted for herself; admitted how many times over the past few years that she had wanted to crawl into Mummy's lap and let her fuss the hurt away...

"Yeah," Sharon admits. "I didn't know my parents, or my other grandparents. We...I was a baby, so I don't remember, obviously, but Grandpa says we were in a plane crash, and only he and I made it out."

 _Is it possible to miss someone you never knew?_ had been a thought experiment in a philosophical discussion at school, once. If Peggy could punch every single girl who said "no" in the face right now, she would probably cry with joy at being able to see them again.

"I'm so sorry, darling."

The endearment had slipped out of her mouth without her even thinking about it, and when she realizes it she almost feels embarrassed, but a huge smile stretches across Sharon's face, and her attempts to school it into something more professional meet with only semi-success. 

"Yeah, Peg's got that effect on people," Steve says, and Sharon laughs as Peggy swats Steve's arm. 

"I had your old room, growing up," Sharon says to Peggy, almost giggling at the flush on her great-aunt's face. "Grandpa told me all about you, all your stories. He said...he said I was a lot like you."

It's almost an identical movement when Peggy and Sharon both wipe at their eyes, and they end up laughing again.

"So how did you, how did you end up an American, then?" Peggy asks, leaning against Steve's side.

It's nice to let someone else be the focus for awhile, Steve thinks, as Sharon leads them away from the lab to wander the non-restricted sections of the NYHQ, telling Peggy about how Michael had married after a decade-long tempestuous courtship with Millie, one of Peggy's acquaintances at Bletchley, and how their only child, Richard, had gone to America to study and fell in love with Linda, a nurse. Even if Peggy grips his hand hard enough to hurt at every mention of a nephew and in-laws that she'll never get to meet, and bites her lip when Sharon says that she had to sponsor Michael's stay in America because he could no longer live on his own, she at least only has to listen instead of talk, and she gets to share that nebulous grief with Sharon.

The relief doesn't last very long, unfortunately; there are only so many places Sharon is cleared to show them and only so much information that's comfortable to share with a person you've only known a few hours. Eventually the conversation loses to silence, and Steve rescues them with the supposition that they're ready to give samples now.

Sharon calls for Georgia over her walkie-talkie ("We call them comms now; it sounds more dignified") and the nurse is waiting for them when they arrive, flanked by a redheaded woman in a lab coat and bearing a manila envelope who introduces herself as Dr. Jean Grey. Sharon excuses herself, again in an effort to maintain dignity; Peggy provides her sample first, and after Steve comes out of the bathroom with his own cup, Jean gestures for them to follow her into the exam room, and for Georgia to pull the door closed behind them.

"Is there a problem?" Peggy asks as she sits.

"Not...quite," Jean says. "Just something important that I want to discuss with you." She clears her throat. "You've probably ascertained we had to run tests on you while you were unconscious. We did this just to make sure you had no internal damage we needed to account for."

"Which I suppose is reasonable enough," Peggy concedes in a mutter, more to calm Steve than to indicate unconditional acceptance.

"We ran several tests, blood draws, x-rays...we have some radiology tests that are even better than x-rays now, actually. We also did a few tissue tests, biopsies. And over the course of our testing we found some...anomalies." She grimaces, gearing herself up. "Captain Rogers, we know that you were aware of your...condition, from your Project Rebirth file, but Agent Carter--"

"I know I have some parts missing," Peggy says, seeing Jean unconsciously hover the envelope vaguely at her pelvis. "I've known for some time now. It didn't interfere with my duties, so I saw no reason to disclose that information to anyone." Except for Dr. Erskine, who couldn't use anything in Erskine Beta that might react badly, and Steve so he would feel less alone, and eventually Bucky when she knew she could trust him.

Jean nods.

"Does...does anyone else know, about u--about Peggy?" Steve asks. His ship's already sailed, if they have his Rebirth file. His condition had actually been a contributing factor to his selection, at least where Phillips was concerned; a test to see if Erskine Gamma could "cure" him.

"Just my medical team," Jean assures. "No one else. Not even Director Fury. He doesn't have the right to know any _specific_ details of your medical care, unless you say so. Or it compromises global security, or something like that."

The fist around Peggy's lungs relaxes, letting them both breathe again. "Good. Good. So... _is_ there a problem?"

"Well, we're not sure," Jean says. "We think you're fine, Captain Rogers, since you had the orchiopexy as a baby, but for Agent Carter..."

"Yes?" Peggy asks, squaring her shoulders. 

"There _is_ a risk for developing cancer in the testes, but with your serum...well, we don't know if that's something to be worried about."

She watches them struggle back to the present moment after the mention of cancer sucked them violently out of it, grasping at the addendum about the serum like a rope thrown to a drowning man. 

"Peggy's serum cured her of Wilson's disease," Steve says, like a defensive weapon. "You have to know _that_."

"We do," Jean says. "That's why we're not sure whether to be concerned or not." 

"So...what are you suggesting?" Peggy asks. 

"Honestly, the risk of cancer is pretty low even for unenhanced people with AIS..."

"AIS?" Steve repeats. 

"Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome," Jean elaborates. "That's...that's what we call it nowadays."

It's a lot better than _male pseudohermaphroditism_ , that's for sure. Steve nods. Peggy makes a noise. 

"So I'm definitely not pushing for any surgical intervention right now," Jean continues. "There's no need. The biopsy results came back negative even for precancerous cells. Now there _is_ also a risk to your bone health, both of you; a chance of density loss. But again, because of Erksine's work, we don't know whether or not to be concerned. So my suggestion is just that you allow us to continue to keep an eye you as we have been, and make sure that nothing develops."

"...Well. Apparently I do have another ten months set aside for you to do just that," Peggy says, her tone cooling with every word.

"I've got the rest of my life, it looks like," Steve adds under his breath.

"I don't need an answer right this second," Jean says. "God knows you've had enough thrown at you today. I just thought you ought to _know_ as soon as possible. You can tell me what you want to do at any time." She holds up the envelope for their regard, and sets it on the bed. "I drew up some papers--information on AIS that you might not have had back then, and some testing options--really quick when I heard you woke up. I'll leave them here for you to look over. I'll be checking in with you periodically, but you can always ask for me to be paged."

"Thank you," they barely manage to say. Jean smiles at them, self-consciously wry, and excuses herself; they hear her greet Sharon after she opens the door.

"How long until they tag us, d'you think?" Steve murmurs in Peggy's ear, and Peggy snorts.

"Everything okay?" Sharon asks as she steps into the room. "Relatively speaking?"

"Fine," Peggy says, glancing at Steve's increasingly ill-looking face. "Nothing for...nothing for you to worry about." It's been sixty-six years; how much of their private business has been made public record? And how widespread is that knowledge?

"Do you need me to go?" Sharon asks, after a moment of thick quiet.

Steve scrubs a hand over his face. "Agent Thi--...Shar-, Sharon?"

"Yeah?"

"All that info you were telling us earlier, off of your, your tablet, you called it?" She hums in response. "How did, how did you get it?"

"Um...well, lots of ways. Nothing was really classified, so we just took your info from the archives and went from there. Used the internet, looked at public records...it didn't take very long. Why?"

"Can anyone use it? The internet?"

"Yeah, it's...well, access is restricted in this building for security purposes, but in general, for the most part, yeah. You need to look something up?"

They'll have to search for these particular answers once they're out of the building, then. No need to clue Sharon in on their concerns if she's somehow still ignorant of them. "We'll be looking up a lot of things, I think," Peggy says, trying to lead Sharon into levity. 

She doesn't quite buy into it, but she at least plays along. "Did you want to...see it? The information I do have? Or is it...do you want a break from everything."

A _psychotic_ break from everything might be nice right about now. Steve nods. "I think if we don't find out what we want to know, we're just going to be thinking about it until we do."

"All right." Sharon leans up against a table, reaching into her suit jacket and removing her device. "What do you want to know?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter went from too short to too long very quickly, so I cut it off here and will continue next chapter...
> 
> \- [This](https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexisnedd/army-of-hairdryers?utm_term=.fbqjWzMEXY#.ynJN8jZDmn) sounds like a really cumbersome way to revive a frozen person, which may explain why the Winter Soldier was around for fifty years but only used for like thirty missions. I think that'd be purposeful, though; nothing like encouraging the fear and confusion surrounding a "ghost" by having years go by between appearances. Hydra could also take advantage of the post-trauma amnesia associated with comas to better fry Bucky's brain. 
> 
> \- Thought it odd that Howard recovered the Tessarect in the 40s but SHIELD appears to not have used it; made more sense to me for it to have stayed missing.
> 
> \- This is the first time I've confirmed that Peggy has AIS, as well as Steve (hers is Complete AIS, however, while his is only Partial). There are _tons_ of links to all the resources I use to portray them as such, which would break character limit if I tried to code them in, so if you're super curious about what they were talking about, ask in the comments~
> 
> \- My homebase is the MCU, but I borrow portrayals and details from other universes, including the X-Men film series, X-Men: Evolution, the 2016 Deadpool movie, the various Spiderman continuities, and the various Marvel comics universes (I've even ganked from the 2017 Wonder Woman movie and The Bletchley Circle). Christine Palmer*, Georgia Jenkins, and Linda Carter were all transplanted from the _Night Nurse_ Marvel comics series from the 70s, and Bethany Cabe is an alias of Whitney Frost, seen here because she was a secretary at one point. Accordingly, I'm using Jean Grey as a physician, because she acts as such in the 2000 X-Men movie.
> 
> Don't fully accept the other universes as "canon" backdrops for the sake of Cord-'verse, though; because a) there are conflicting details between the continuities, and b1) I haven't seen or read the entirety of these other stories, or b2) it's been a long time since I saw/read them. (Heck, even within the MCU, I haven't seen The Incredible Hulk, Ant-Man, Dr. Strange, Spider-Man: Homecoming, any of the Defenders' ensemble or solo series, or GotG2; and I only caught a few episodes of Agent Carter and Agents of SHIELD a long time ago.)
> 
> *I've declined to see Dr. Strange because of the whitewashing, so I didn't realize that Christine Palmer was in that movie. Whomp!


	6. The Limit of What We've Got

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TW: Discussions of death incl. murder, disease, and suicide; mentions of wars in Vietnam and Israel; mentions of terrorism; mentions of anti-Japanese racism; mentions of antisemitism, including the Holocaust; discussed ableism**
> 
> I came up with some cool headcanons for the Commandos/SSR based on history, some retconning of history (why were there Allied forces in Northern Italy in November of 1942 according to my timeline, you ask? hahaha well you see *furious attempts to not rewrite the whole war while coming up with something plausible*), the original comics, and the MCU tie-in comics, and since I’m still figuring out how _Language_ is gonna work, I thought I’d at least hint at them here. 
> 
> Consequently, this may be a chapter that no one but me is very interested in, but I figure that in-universe, Steve and Peggy would want to know how their loved ones ended up, and treating that discovery as a footnote felt kinda hollow to me.
> 
> Speaking of history, Marvel did this weird thing where they appear to have timewarped from 1947 straight to, like, 1964 or so. I’m trying to work with that, so some characters had kids in the time ranges you’d expect, and others waited quite a long time. *cough*Howard*cough*

"Start with the Commandos," Steve says, because they at least know how that turned out. "Please," he tacks on, remembering his manners. "If you, if you have any information on how they ended up."

"I...do, in fact," Sharon says, reaching into her jacket for her device. "Not exhaustive, but I've got some basic info. Uh...” She taps at her screen a few times. “Anything, anyone you want me to start with?”

Steve and Peggy look at each other, and then almost simultaneously shake their heads and shrug. 

“Ok. Alphabetical order then, I guess.” Sharon inhales, maybe fortifying herself. “Ah...all right, Jacques Dernier. Never married, no known issue. Joined the Direction Centrale des Renseignements Genereaux after the war. Apparently he made hunting down rogue Nazis and other terrorists his life work,” she says, with a faint smile. 

“Sounds like him,” Steve says, with the same. 

“He...died in 1973, in his office,” Sharon says, slowing down. She glances up at the pair of them, warning them it wasn’t a pretty end; they look back at her, grimly prepared. “He was assassinated.”

“Oh my God,” slides out of Peggy’s mouth. 

“We don’t have to—”

“No, no,” Peggy says, putting up a shaky hand to stay her great-niece; Steve’s hand grips her leg as he tries to maintain the same control. “It’s...we’re going to find out eventually. And it was...we know that he passed already. Please. Just...” She pats at her face, wiping away a tear track. “Continue. Do you know,” she clears her throat, “do we know who killed him?”

“Well...” Sharon says, resettling on her hips from where she’d been about to stand. “There’s speculation. There was a group, the Charles Martel group, that bombed the Algerian consulate in Marseilles in December that year, just a few days before he was killed. If Dernier was connected in any way, investigating, or even just suspected of sympathizing with Algeria...”

Gabe had mentioned once that Dernier _had_ expressed sympathy for the Algerians, though he couldn’t tell if it was genuine compassion for their plight or just a shared hatred of the Vichy regime. 

“So is...I’m gathering that Algeria is its own country now?” Steve asks, thickly. 

“Yeah. There’re a couple new countries that formed, actually, after the war.” There’s an odd expression she directs at him that he can’t decipher. “I can show you a map, if you’d like, when we’re done with this. Or whenever you want.”

“That, that’d be appreciated,” Peggy says. 

“Okay. All right then, we’ll do that. That’s...all I have for Dernier.” They nod again, a little more sluggishly. “That’ll bring us to Corporal Dugan. Though of course _I_ think of him as Former Director Dugan...”

“DumDum was...he was Head of SHIELD for twenty years, Gabe said,” Steve starts for her.

“Mmhmm. One of our longest-serving directors, in fact. I mean, who was going to try to replace a Howling Commando?”

“Damn right,” Steve says, because she seems to want some levity out of him, before... “Pardon my language, ma’am.”

“That’s... _barely_ a swear anymore, don’t worry,” Sharon says, amused and perhaps slightly charmed. “Well, in any case, he led us through a couple more skirmishes, after the war, _your_ war, ended. Up until...there was a war, in Vietnam, that we had just gotten involved in—“

“Vietnam?”

“Oh. Ah... _French Indochina_ , I think you’d know it as.”

“France didn’t hold onto much, did they?” Peggy asks. 

“We didn’t either,” Sharon says, almost apologetically. “England-we, I mean. We...I’ll show you the map.”

“All right.”

“And...to get back on track...we, _America_ -we, had just gotten involved. He and Agent Morita went over together on behalf of SHIELD and...well, only Agent Morita came back.”

 _That’s war_ Steve reminds himself forcefully, as Peggy’s grip on him starts to hurt. 

“He was sixty-five,” Sharon reports, and then looks up at them. “Should I—?”

“Yes. Go on. Please.”

She takes another emboldening breath and glances at her notes, trying to find something a little more pleasant. “We did reach out to his remaining family.”

 _Mrs. Catherine Dugan; Patrick, Gloria, Dolores, Joan, and Frank_. Steve memorized all the names of the Commandos’ next-of-kin, because he would be the one to notify them in case...he never wrote to the Barneses. He never even got to send the damn telegram...

“His oldest did survive the war,” Sharon confirms; Paddy Dugan had turned eighteen in ‘43 and was immediately called up, which had caused DumDum to make no shortage of offers to take night watch for someone else, since he wasn’t sleeping anyway. “And all of his kids grew up to have their own families. We counted thirteen grandchildren, thirty-four great-grandchildren, eighty-eight great-great-grandchildren, and currently four great-great-great-grandchildren. Number Five is on the way.”

“Oh my God,” is the only thing Steve can think to say, and Peggy laughs when her potential words all seem inadequate.

“The three youngest— _his_ three youngest, I mean—they’re actually all still alive. If you’d like to reach out to them, at some point. We spoke to Joan—Dolores has dementia—so we could give you that phone number.”

“Would she even want to talk to us?” Steve asks. “I mean, we weren’t...we didn’t know the family personally or anything.” Dominique had had their picture in her kitchen, but maybe that was a singular situation.

“Well, there aren’t a ton of people who _wouldn’t_ want to talk to you,” Sharon says. “But you _did_ serve with her dad, so she would probably want to meet you at least one time, just for that.”

Both of them make a mental note to pursue the question of their fame at a more opportune moment, and nod. 

“Um, everything else I know about Director Dugan is classified,” Sharon says, with a bit of a laugh that they let themselves share. “Going down the alphabet, that’d take us to Lieutenant Falsworth...” She swipes her finger across her device. “He lived much more quietly than the others.”

“Yeah, Gabe...Agent Jones said. Implied.”

“Mmhmm. He went back to Alexandria. Got married. To an Egyptian woman, actually. Her name was Batul. And they had two kids, Jacqueline and Brian. Egypt got independence in ‘53, and when that happened they moved up to Maidstone, apparently the extended Falsworth family had property there.” Sharon pauses. “I’ve met them.”

“Oh?” Peggy asks. 

“Not...Lieutenant Falsworth died in 1981, I wasn’t even born yet,” Sharon amends, and she can almost see them deflate in front of her. “But I knew about him, because he and Grandpa met up at a...it was a memorial or something like that, something to mark the 10-year anniversary of the war ending, and they must have hit it off because they stayed in touch right up until he died. Jackie and Brian turned the estate into a war museum, and Grandpa took me a few times when I was old enough.”

“And what are they like?” Peggy asks, trying to perk back up.

“Well, I don’t know them too well; they’re both thirty someodd years older than me. I send them Christmas cards every year on Grandpa’s behalf, but that’s about the extent of it.”

“Oh. I see.”

“Not a huge clan like the Dugans, are they?” Steve tries to salvage. 

“Not at all,” Sharon laughs. “Jackie’s only got one son and one grandson. Brian...” She hesitates, again fixing Steve with a look he can’t quite decipher, one that seems to change between different types of uncertainty; this time, though, the clue comes quickly. “He and Roger are very happy being childfree.”

For a moment, a very long one, Steve feels like he’s been punched in the throat. 

“You’re saying that Brian and Roger are...” Peggy starts, just to make sure that the impossible that she’s inferring is correct. 

“Married,” Sharon confirms. “Well, sorta. It’s a civil partnership, so it’s like a step below marriage. But there _are_ some places in the world now, where two men or two women could get married.”

“Here?” Steve manages to say. “In the US?”

“A couple states allow it. In New York it’s actually set to go into effect in a couple days.”

“Well. Well that’s certainly something we didn’t...didn’t think would ever happen,” Peggy says, as Steve remembers every excuse Bucky ever made as to why he wasn’t seeing What’s-her-name anymore, every mad scramble to disentangle themselves when they heard someone unlocking the front door, every time he had wanted to grab Bucky and shake him for throwing away his shot at a life for someone he had less than no future with.

“There’s been a lot of progress in civil rights, since you’ve been under,” Sharon says. “Interracial marriage, that’s legal everywhere in the US now, too.”

“About time you lot caught up with that,” Peggy tries to joke in Steve’s vague direction. 

“But we don’t have, like, three-person marriage or anything like that yet,” Sharon continues.

Peggy makes herself laugh, and Steve, after a moment, affects a lackluster huff. “I suppose that is...that _would_ be a bit much, wouldn’t it.”

“Sorry, if we could, we could get back to...?” Steve asks, finally getting a firm grip on the present moment.

Whatever Sharon’s aim, she lets it go for now. “Right, yeah, sorry. Um...well, that’s about it for the Falsworths. Like I said, I don’t know them _terribly_ well...”

“That’s fine, that’s...”

“And...well, you already met up with Agent Jones,” she offers a weak smile, “so, that leaves Agent Morita. Um...well, by the time he got back to the States, his family,” _Mrs. Ruby Morita; Donald, and Leonard_ , “had been released from internment, and they moved east to DC, so he could work with SHIELD. He stayed wth us all the way up until Director Dugan was killed in action, and then he moved back out west to Hollywood. I’ve seen a couple of the movies he worked on; he was just a camera operator, but...if you want, I can try to arrange it so you can see some of them, while you’re staying with us.”

“We’d, we’d appreciate that,” Peggy says, as Steve nods jerkily.

“Okay.” She smiles, and then glances down at her notes again. “Um...well, he moved back west with just his wife; his sons stayed on the East Coast. They’ve both passed, but they had children of their own. Leonard’s son, Andrew, he’s in Queens right now, actually. He’s the principal of a high school there. If you _did_ want to meet with anyone, any of their families, he’s the closest, geographically.”

They don’t have an answer for her and, to her credit, she doesn’t quite seem to expect any. She sets her device on her lap, drumming her fingers against the sides for a moment before speaking.

“Is there...anyone else you wanted to know about? Right now?”

Steve’s breath catches, and Peggy releases more of a shudder than a sigh. This had been hard enough, even starting out with the knowledge that all the Commandos except Gabe had passed. To go in blind for the rest of everyone they loved...

“Well, our alternative is, what, to sit around and do nothing until the next medical test?” Peggy finally voices for the both of them.

Sharon nods, chewing on her lip. “All right.”

“Unless we’re keeping you from your actual duties,” Steve offers.

“No, Director Fury wants me to stay near you. And that’s fine. Sticking close to people is kinda in my job description. So we can keep going, if you want.”

“Yeah. Please. Thank you.”

“No problem.” Sharon taps and swipes at her screen a few more times. “Well, we got a _little_ info on Colonel Phillips. He was a very private man. Stuck around long enough to help found SHIELD and then retired to Italy.”

“To La Contessa, probably,” Steve mutters to Peggy, and she can’t help but giggle.

“He _did_ cohabitate with Valentina Fontana until his death, yes,” Sharon says, clearly amused by her great-aunt’s reaction. 

“Good for him,” Peggy says, getting a smile out of herself. It had been quite funny and more than a little sweet to see the gruff man so clearly smitten with the woman who provided money and shelter to the SSR while they were in the country.

“No issue, obviously,” Sharon says; Valentina had indeed been past childbearing age. “Um...” She scrolls up and down through her notes, looking for something easy for them to digest; when nothing comes up she picks one at random. “Dr. Erskine’s wife, and two of his children, didn’t...they didn’t make it, they didn’t survive. They had actually already died before either of you even met him.”

“He suspected as much,” Peggy says quietly; she remembers how wistful he looked when he told her she reminded him of his twin daughters, and how passionately he had fought for her to be the recipient of Erskine Beta when there were arguments to not waste it on a dying woman. 

“He knew,” Steve amends for her in a low voice, recalling the man getting progressively more intoxicated, and despondently loose-tongued, that night in the barracks before Project Rebirth was culminated.

“One of his daughters, Anita, she made it,” Sharon says. “She...this is how it’s written in my notes: _Anita Eckerstein “made aliyah” 1949; has descendants in Israel_.” Sharon glances up at Steve. “That’s another country that exists now.”

“...I’m sorry?”

“The State of Israel was officially created in 1948.”

“That’s, that’s...” _amazing_ , he wants to say, before the cynical part of him cuts the optimistic off. “That can’t have gone over well.”

“It...did not,” Sharon confirms with a grimace. “It’s still...there’s problems.”

“Of course,” Steve says flatly, and Peggy rests a sympathetic head on his shoulder. “The more things change, right?” Sharon sorta-nods, her grimace only deepening, and Steve scrubs an increasingly weary hand over his face, filing this away as a topic of interest, but for a later time. “We can, we can move on.”

“Okay,” Sharon says, quickly, glancing down at her device. “Well, on a somewhat related topic, you probably want to know about Howard Stark.”

Peggy makes a high noise in her throat, and Steve seeks out her hand to squeeze. He still doesn’t quite understand their friendship, and all Peggy has really offered by way of explanation is that they kept each other’s secrets, but he knows, very keenly, how it feels to lose a confidant.

“Like Agent Hill said, he spent a long time trying to find you,” Sharon says. “The first year after the war, basically. He was putting together the idea for SHIELD at the same time, because he came back with it. He was very involved in SHIELD all the way up until 1970; after that he focused more on Stark Industries. He did stick around with us as a civilian contractor until his death, though. He died in 1991, along with his wife. Car accident.”

“What happened in 1970?” Steve asks, rather than letting them focus on his death. 

“That’s when his son was born,” Sharon says, allowing herself a sentimental expression. 

Despite everything Peggy has to widen her eyes. Gabe had said Howard married a long time after the war ended, but that date made Howard a first-time father at the age of fifty-three.

“Ga—Agent Jones said his son is...noteworthy,” Steve says. 

“Yes. Very. Tony Stark—that’s his name—Tony Stark’s...you know what, that’s something I think you’re gonna need to see to believe. I’m gonna request access to the footage, so you can see for yourself.”

“O-...okay,” Steve says, quirking an eyebrow; Peggy frowns. 

“Nothing bad,” Sharon says. “Believe me. It’s...very impressive, what he’s accomplished.” They nod, accepting the assertion for now. “Um...he’s Howard’s only known child, has no known children of his own as of right now...oh. I nearly forgot we had this...”

She turns the device around to show them, but instead of her written notes, they’re presented with a screen-sized black-and white photograph. 

“This is Howard Stark at his wedding to Maria Carbonel in 1965,” Sharon says, coming a little closer so they can see the picture without her having to relinquish the device. “From the Society page. It’s the...it’s the last known picture of him with _all_ the Howling Commandos.”

It’s a posed shot for the newspaper, and full of people they don’t know, but even aged twenty years the Howling Commandos, clustered around Howard and surrounded by who must be their wives and maybe even family—the picture makes it look like the whole of Manhattan was invited to this wedding—are immediately recognizable.

“They look happy,” Steve says, trying to get some compersion through the damp, ragged knot in his throat. 

“Can we have this?” Peggy asks, touching the tablet before realizing that she oughtn’t, and letting it go. “Is there a way for us to, to have a copy of the picture, I mean.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Sharon says. “I can get that for you.” She leans over, so she can look at the picture without taking it from them, and taps her finger against the screen when she finds her target. “This woman, you probably can’t tell, but that’s Rosemarie Arthursson. _Handel_ , Rosemarie Handel. Arthursson is her married name.”

“She never went back to being Elisabeth?” Steve asks, as Peggy shifts forward on her hips, trying to see the six-year-old girl in the twenty-nine-year-old woman grainily depicted in the photograph.

“There’s no official record of any _Elisabeth Schneider_ after 1942,” Sharon says, with an appropriate glum grimace. “Just of a Rosemarie Handel being taken in by a “cousin”,” Sharon puts in air quotes, “in Sweden in ‘43, which you probably already knew.” She finally brings the tablet back down, and flips back to her notes. “She married Hans Arthursson in 1960, and they emigrated to America the following year. She has family living in LA nowadays.”

“Is she still alive?” Peggy asks, looking up at Sharon with painfully hopeful eyes. She’d be in her seventies, but Gabe’s eighty-nine, so—

Sharon shakes her head, and glances away when tears seem to simply materialize on Peggy’s face rather than actively fall from her eyes, and Steve folds his hands over each other in front of his mouth. “She had a stroke in 2002. She passed from heart failure the following year.”

There’d been hope, and a few almost plausible plans, of finding Rosemarie and adopting her after the war; thoughts of a homestead out west or in Alaska Territory, or just anywhere people wouldn’t squint too hard at their living arrangements; the girl had to have an education and a social life, after all. “I’ll shoot myself in the arm or something,” Bucky had said, only maybe joking. “Then you two can tell people I took a bullet for one of you, so now you keep me around to mind the kid while you work, so I can still feel useful. That’s believable, right?”

“We can stop,” Sharon says quietly, after a moment, when Peggy’s put her face in Steve’s shoulder again, and Steve’s fingers have gone white where they’ve clutched his knee and Peggy’s hand.

“No,” Peggy protests, gulping air as she lifts her face. “No, we should...there isn’t much more, is there? There can’t be, we’re running out of people.”

“Just your...” Sharon glances down. “Just your immediate families. I don’t think we should—”

“It’s going to drive us mad. To sit here and wonder if...to just sit around and not know. My parents can’t possibly still be alive, can they? Right?” Sharon shakes her head, obviously reluctant, and Peggy wipes at her face. “How did they die? When?”

Sharon glances at Steve, who almost can’t manage a look back; when he doesn’t move to stop her she exhales softly, bites the inside of her cheek, and acquiesces. 

“Your father died in ‘56, just a couple months after _my_ father was born. Complications from diabetes.” Peggy nods. At the very least, that was expectable. “Your mother...”

“Yes?”

“She died in 1945.”

“...I see,” Peggy says, after a long, nauseous pause, her mouth barely moving, her face ghost-white. “I see.”

“Peggy...” Steve starts.

“And the Barneses?” Peggy interrupts, a machine programmed to finish her task. “What happened to—” she has to suddenly clear her throat, “—what became of them?”

Sharon looks over at Steve, who is steadily becoming as colorless as Peggy. She turns her face down at her device and then lifts her gaze back to him, offering him a chance to defer, and there’s a few seconds where he almost takes her up on it, almost decides that he never wants to know, never wants to close the book on their fates, but he grits his teeth and nods at her.

“Ah...” Sharon flicks her finger against her screen. “Well. George and Winifred Barnes died in 1968, within about ten minutes of each other. He had...cancer, lung cancer, and when he died the shock triggered a heart attack in, in Winifred.”

Steve knows what that feels like. He thinks Erskine Gamma is the only reason he didn’t die still clinging to the side of the train. It might be the only reason his heart is still beating now.

“And Bec-, and Rebecca? Rebecca?” he stutters as his chest collapses on itself. An asthma attack would be great right now; he doesn’t have anything to treat it. But, no, Peggy’s here, she’s barely held together, he has to be around to support her. God, did Rebecca have anyone with her when her parents died? They weren’t there for her; he wasn’t there, Bucky wasn’t... “Is she still alive?”

“She died in 1998,” Sharon says quietly. “Complications from Alzheimer’s.”

He hears Sharon continue talking—that there’s a widower, one surviving child, two grandchildren, and one great-grandchild to Rebecca’s name—as if underwater. Dimly a part of him scolds that he’s lost parents and siblings before, and he got through it then, and he oh _God_ he’s lost another set of parents and another little sister, and this time all at once.

“Can you, can you...” He waves his hand clumsily, heavily, from Sharon to the door. “Need a...we need a minute.”

“Of course. Of course, I’ll be...” Sharon stands up, and points to a button on the wall by the bed. “If you need me again, tap that button.”

“All right. All right.” Sharon hesitates for a moment, before power-walking out the door and closing it behind her. 

“1945,” Peggy says, as soon as it clicks shut. “I’m not surprised. She’s...my mother was very...dramatic, like that.”

“Could’ve been an accident,” limps out of Steve’s numb mouth. “Or—” 

“No,” Peggy says, standing up suddenly, her hands balling into fists as her pent-up nerves unleash into pacing. “No, Sharon would have said what it was, if it wasn’t...if she hadn’t...oh, _God_.”

“Peggy...”

“Well I can’t say that I blame her,” Peggy continues, her eyes shining to the point of blindness, for her and for him as well. “Honestly what else could she possibly be expected to do? What else _can_ you do, when you think your children are de—”

She loses her breath mid-word, and her strength mid-step, and she sinks to the floor struggling to breathe. Steve trips off the edge of the bed, not getting to her before the first wail wrings out her stomach on the way out of her mouth, but managing to stumble-crawl to the floor beside her in time for the second to be screamed into his shoulder.

*

It’s over in a few minutes, just long enough for the front of Steve’s shirt and the crown of Peggy’s head to become soaked; the numb shock returns and chases it away, leaving them a limp, tremulous heap on the floor.

It’s another minute or two before they drag themselves to their feet, Peggy too drawn in to fuss at Steve helping her sit on the mattress. She tries to catch her breath as Steve hovers, and then takes his turn at pacing until her chest is no longer heaving. 

“Your hands are shaking,” she eventually observes, toneless.

There’s no window, so Steve’s tucked himself into a corner to look at the floor, instead. 

“I’m fine,” he says, without looking up. 

“Mine are too, you know,” she says, after a moment. 

It’s the exact right chord to play, because immediately Steve leaves his corner for the button Sharon had indicated.

She appears within seconds. Job description indeed. 

“Could we possibly have something to eat?” Peggy asks, before Steve can exclude himself from the request. 

“Yeah, sure, of course,” Sharon says. “Do you want to eat in here? Or come down to the cafeteria?”

That takes a few seconds of deliberation. “Can you come get us when it’s ready?” Steve finally asks, because neither of them feel like going anywhere, but they hardly saw anything of this building earlier.

“Yeah, that’s fine. Any requests?”

They have none, and Sharon bustles off to the kitchen, exhorting them to use the button if they need her. Steve chose wisely, because Peggy starts crying again when Sharon leaves, and Steve starts when Peggy grabs his hand, and they have this second wind mostly run through by the time Sharon gets back. 

The building is still maddeningly indistinct with all its closed doors, but they are at least able to get a feel for the layout and pick out some spots they recognize. Maybe to contrast the narrowness and straight lines of the halls, the cafeteria is large and circular; it must be off-hours, because only a few people are milling around the room. Sharon herds them to a table a little off-center, towards one of the undecorated walls, and they figure out why when Sharon presses a button on the tabletop itself, and a small projector rises out of it, shining its light on the wall.

“Watch,” she says, playing with her tablet, and after a moment the blank light is replaced by two maps of the world; one labeled 1945, the other 2011. “Anything in the public domain you wanna see, I can probably bring it up for you.”

The shape of the continents is the same, which is a strange sort of comfort, but everything in the second picture looks a lot more broken up than in the first. It’s at least distracting, trying to count all the new states and countries; they’re so absorbed that the clattering of a tray landing on the table nearly startles them to their feet.

“Sorry,” the tray-bearer says. “Didn’t mean to spook you.” They regard him quietly, which he takes as an invitation to slide into an empty chair. “I’m on lunch break, so I thought I’d bring you your food and introduce myself. I’m Clint.”

“Agent Clint Barton,” Sharon elaborates. “He was the archer on the roof.”

“You nearly shot me in the head,” Steve says, slightly more matter-of-fact than accusing. 

“Correction: I perfectly shot the air _next_ to your head, as I intended.” Clint pulls a paper plate holding two pieces of pizza off the tray. 

“So who’s on the roof now?”

“My probie,” they barely make out past his mouthful of pizza. “Her name’s Katie,” he elaborates after he swallows. “We’re the best archers in SHIELD.”

“Where does one acquire archery skills in this, ah, this day and age?” Peggy asks. 

“Well she got hers from me, and I got mine in the circus. I hear you can get some at IKEA, but you have to put them together yourself.”

“That’s the second time...what’s IKEA?” Steve asks. 

“Oh, it’s a furniture store, except you buy the parts and put the stuff together yourself, so it’s cheaper. They got a cafeteria in the middle of the store, too, because the whole thing’s like four stories tall. It’s cool. Um. Nifty? Most diverting? I’m not up on my 40s lingo, sorry. Anyway, you should go sometime. You’ll like it. It’s an experience.”

“They still have circuses nowadays?” Peggy asks, as she tries to process the mechanics of this IKEA nonsense. 

“Dying art, but yeah. Why?”

“Oh no reason, just...one of our...one of the Howling Commandos used to be in the circus. Your Former Director Dugan,” she directs partially at Sharon. “He was a strongman, though, not an archer.”

“Oh, a _strongman_ ,” Clint says knowingly. “Love those guys; they’re the best.”

“He is— _was_ a rather... _diverting_ individual.”

“Gave me a run for my money,” Steve adds, trying and failing to rescue the mood.

“Well here, eat,” Clint says, after a beat of mournful quiet, pushing the tray towards them. “You ever had a burrito before?”

“Can’t say as we have,” Steve says, eyeing what he assumes are the burritos. 

“It’s just beans and rice inside of it,” Sharon says. “We don’t wanna give you anything super heavy to eat just yet.”

“We’re used to not having much in the field, anyway,” Steve says, finally picking up his meal. 

“Wouldn’t you’ve been crazy hungry all the time, though?” Clint asks. “You’ve got those supersoldier metabolisms, right?”

“Well everyone’s hungry like that in the field,” Steve says. “You get...you acclimate to it.“

“I like to think I kept you all better fed than you might’ve been,” Peggy says, with a playful pout. 

“Of course you did, Peg.”

“You cook?” Clint asks. 

“She hunts,” Steve corrects.

Clint nods slowly. “Wasn’t expecting that. Probably should have been.”

”Oh?” Peggy tilts her head. “Why? Why wouldn’t you expect it.”

“...Well you _know_ , up here,” he gestures to his head with both hands, and then has to wipe a streak of grease off his temple, “that it’s BS, I mean, you were a special agent in World War II, but...ah...there’s this _image_ of you that gets blasted everywhere, and...”

“Image?” Peggy repeats, not sure whether to be more annoyed that it’s apparently inaccurate, or flabbergasted that it exists at all.

“Yeah, you’re...famous...?”

“So we’re gathering,” Steve says, “but...we...we don’t quite understand _how_ , I guess. We’re sixty-six—” the number steals his breath for a moment, “—sixty-six years away from, from the war, right? I can understand _you_ guys caring, but the, the _paparazzi_ , and the museum, and _having an image_ , we don’t...I didn’t think the Captain America schtick had that much staying power,” he tries to joke.

“Well...” Sharon says, leaning back in her chair and puzzling out how to phrase this. “The way you two... _disappeared_...caught a lot of people’s interest.”

“The Hercules of World War II boards an enemy aircraft followed by his beautiful and devoted sweetheart, saves the world, and then vanishes into thin air,” Clint elaborates. “You could make a movie out of it. They _did_ make a movie out of it.”

“They made a couple movies out of it,” Sharon amends.

“And then there’s all the urban legends...”

“Urban, urban legends?” Steve stammers.

“Y’know. People claiming they saw you, or your ghosts. Mostly in, like, Russia and the Scandinavian countries. But there’re at least a dozen hotels along the Eastern Seaboard that you two are supposedly haunting.”

“Is this...true?” Peggy asks, blinking at Sharon.

Sharon nods. “A lot of military people “see” Captain Rogers in particular. Soldiers getting trapped by the enemy, or surviving a grenade blast...they’ll swear that your spirit was there. Guiding them or fighting off insurgents or...it’s just a stress hallucination, obviously, but, people swear up and down...”

“That’s...wow, that’s, that’s...” _really effective propaganda_ Steve’s brain supplies for him, but he only manages, “incredible.”

“The best is when little kids write to you for Christmas,” Clint says. 

“They what?” Steve and Peggy ask at the same time.

“Because you disappeared in the far north,” Sharon explains. “A lot of kids were crushed that their hero had gone missing, so their parents told them that you were just stranded at the North Pole, and Santa Claus took you in. And those kids grew up, passed on the legend to their kids, and...now they write to you for Christmas.”

“I did it,” Clint confesses, raising his hand. “Not gonna lie. Up until I was, like, eight.”

“Am I involved in any of this?” Peggy asks, as Steve gapes.

“Sometimes,” Clint says. “And mostly as—”

“The beautiful and devoted sweetheart.”

“...Yeah.”

“And here Georgia said we were supposed to have equality nowadays.”

“Well, we _are_ supposed to,” Sharon says.

“So is it all just...movies and legends and stuff like that?” Steve asks.

“Is there actual _academic_ work on you, you mean?” Steve nods. “Yeah, there’s...well, there’s the museum, obviously. Any class that’s taught about the war is going to at least mention you. People wrote biographies...”

“You got a Wikipedia page, too,” Clint adds helpfully.

“A what?”

“Oh, Wikipedia, it’s an online encyclopedia. On the computer. Show ‘em, Shar’.”

The projection cuts off as Sharon decides that they might want to see this for the first time without anyone else’s prying eyes; after a few seconds of tapping and typing she turns her device around to show them.

“The cool thing about Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it,” Clint says, as they stare. “That’s also the worst thing about it. But people can cite their sources, so you can usually tell what’s made up and what’s not.”

“I’m not quite sure I want to look, at this point,” Peggy almost laughs. 

“I’ll see what I can do about getting you guys internet access,” Sharon says. “It’d be heavily restricted, but this way you could look things up by yourself.”

“We’d appreciate that, thank you, Sharon,” Peggy replies, making herself smile; Steve nods his gratitude, and Sharon smiles back at them.

“In the meantime...if you want, I told you I’d show you about Tony Stark?”

“Yeah, sure,” Steve says, a little fainter than he’s trying for.

It takes Sharon a few seconds to sync her tablet with the projector again, during which Steve and Peggy both come to the conclusion that rice-and-bean burritos taste pretty okay, but their next bite is interrupted by footage of a man clad in red and gold armor shooting across the sky.

“America’s currently involved in a war in Afghanistan,” Sharon starts, as they watch, transfixed. “Tony Stark had uh, kept up with the weapons development part of Stark Industries, and he was over there in 2008 promoting them when he was abducted. In captivity he built a rudimentary version of the suit you see here, and after he was abducted he built...well, what you see here.”

She searches for, and finds, specific footage, explaining the basics of Tony’s battles with the Iron Monger and Anton Vanko against a backdrop of submitted cell-phone videos and news reports. Steve mutters something along the lines of Howard _wishing_ he’d had the resources to create something like the Iron Man armor during the war; Peggy can only respond “He looks just like him.”

“Acts like him, too,” Steve says a minute or so later, when the scene changes to Tony giving two-handed peace signs to whoever is filming while an explosion goes off behind him. 

“He’s a bit known for showboating, yes,” Sharon says, and proves it with a short video of the 2009 Stark Expo. 

“So is he part of SHIELD?” Peggy asks. “Or the military?”

“Neither, but we keep an eye on him,” Clint says. 

“Keep an eye?”

“That’s what we do best.”

 _They’re mainly spies over at SHIELD now_ , Gabe had said. Peggy nods slowly, and is luckily saved from having to come up with anything by Clint checking the device strapped to his wrist and groaning. “Back to work. The Fathers Razzi are pushing some boundaries...it was nice meeting you two. If you need me, I’ll be about twenty feet overhead.”

They wave him off, and after he’s gone Sharon pulls out what they gather is some sort of phone-teleprinter-computer hybrid and taps a message into it. They eat in silence for a moment before Sharon reports “So, I can’t get internet access for you in the building just yet. That would require you to have security clearance and passwords and all sorts of things that take time to get. I’m kinda it for your ability to get on the internet for now.”

“Are we...allowed to leave?” Steve asks. “Just to walk out of the building and go places? Alone?”

“Well...” Sharon sighs. “ _You_ ,” she nods at Steve, “definitely can, though we would prefer if you didn’t just because it’s going to be a media circus if someone spots you. As for Aunt Pe—Agent Carter, it’s a little murkier, in terms of your visa. I know it’s technically good for another ten months, but if anyone from Immigration were to see you out and about and decide you’re healthy enough to go back to England...”

“So am I...trapped here?” Peggy asks. 

“It’s...possible. Like Director Fury said, though,” Sharon says quickly, before either of them can start in, “there are ways you can...”

“Petition for citizenship, join SHIELD, or get married,” Peggy recites coolly. “I recall.” 

“And she’s not allowed to even leave the _building_ in the meantime?” Steve cuts in. 

“We’ll see what we can do. If we have to arrange more “psychological well-visits” like with Agent Jones earlier, then...” Peggy’s thin smile pushes past fury to shoot for appreciative; it only gets to wry, but Sharon seems to understand it. “I know hysterics aren’t your style, but they might help you here.”

“My style is what works.”

That brings Sharon up short for a brief moment, before her expression dissolves into an amused, almost familiar little smile, and she nods. 

They’re feeling neither hungry nor weak at this point, but post-scarcity society or not, food is meant to be eaten, so they force themselves to finish their meal before Steve says, pointedly, that they’re ready to go back up to their room. Sharon, as before, pretends to not notice them memorizing the route and the placement of windows and stairwells on the way, and once she delivers them to the room, very helpfully steps away with the excuse of finding something for them to entertain themselves with. 

“So this is bullshit,” Steve growls, as soon as Sharon steps out. “They’re not even gonna _have_ to tag us, at this rate.”

“It’s all right for now, Steve,” Peggy sighs as she sinks back down onto the mattress. “It’s not as though I’ve anywhere to _go_ at the moment, anyway.”

“What do you wanna do?” Steve asks. “Are you thinking—”

“This had better not be your actual proposal, Steven Rogers.”

He sits next to her, trying to find it in himself to laugh, until he sees no mirth in her at all. 

“I’ll figure something out,” Peggy says, distantly. “They seem, SHIELD seems willing to work with us.”

“Well, at least Sharon does,” Steve allows grumpily, and Peggy huffs. 

“I can’t believe she exists,” she says, after a moment. “She nearly called me Aunt Peggy earlier, did you hear her? She must’ve grown up thinking of me that way, and I had no idea. Yesterday I was Agent Carter, and today I’m Aunt Peggy.”

“Better than the new Santa Claus,” Steve offers, squeezing a chuckle out of her. “I’m gonna tell ‘em.”

“Aw, Steve.” She pouts at him, the corners of her mouth trembling. “And break poor Agent Barton’s heart?”

Steve mock-sighs. “I _guess_ I can allow myself to continue to be so grossly misrepresented. Y’know, for the kids’ sake.”

Peggy laughs, and he laughs, too, but when Sharon comes back she waits quietly outside the door for a long time, until she hears them stop crying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes I named Morita’s sons after Ninja Turtles. 
> 
> Burritos weren’t really known outside the Mexican-American community until the 30s, and then mainly in California. I actually have Morita as being born in Fresno, but moving to Hawaii in ‘31, so he missed out on them.


End file.
